The Two Unknown
by Speedy Hobbit
Summary: Chapter 9: They are over the Ford, and., while carrying a lifeless Frodo, they meet Elrond's folk.
1. The Stone

Author's note: This is the new, revised edition of chapter one. For some odd reason, I grew dissatisfied with the original chapter one, and so therefore I made the decision to change chapter one, as well as the original setting of Libby and April's home. Instead of being a hurdler on the track team, Libby is a race-walker. Instead of it being March 13th, it is now May 23rd. April does not attend River City High, but is instead being temporarily home-schooled for personal reasons. Libby's track injury is not acquired in a race on the 22nd, but is a gift of strenuously speed- walking almost daily from March until the previous day, the final meet of the season. She favors not both knees, but her right ankle and shin. Please, alert me to any inconsistencies that would result from being from the original edition and accidentally overlooked by myself, so that I could rectify them. Thank you, and happy reading. I'll also add that while Libby is a Lord of the Rings fan, she'll forget everything of the vast LotR knowledge she's acquired when she's dumped into Middle-earth, so she won't be forewarned about any encounters. Like I said, canon rules. If you ever desire to contact me, post in my LJ ( www.livejournal.com/~oooootricia00 , feel free to add me to your friends list) or e-mail me at elf_of_justice_d00m@excite.com . Good day to you! ~*~Tricia~*~  
  
Disclaimer: You know those very insignificant characters that happen to appear in Tolkien's works? They're not mine. Just kidding, they're still central to the story, and I am trying to remain as true to canon as I can even with introducing what may merit the label of Mary-Sues into the story. I assure you, there shall be no romances between people of inappropriate age gaps. Arwen and Aragorn are, of course, the exception (and Arwen is NOT the one who helps Frodo at the Ford!) to this rule, because that is canon. I even consider the gap between Pippin's 29 years and Libby's 16 to be disgusting, so no romance. Give me a very slow painful death if I ever go back on this vow I am swearing here. I give my word that this won't be the "traditional" Mary-Sue. Libby and April are friends, not potential gamete- sharers. They aren't your prissy Mary-Sue, nor the overtly "heroic" ones. They're just your average, if not slightly aloof, teenagers of the 21st century. Nor do any LotR canon characters come onto them.. they are not pedophiles. I do not wish to make Tolkien roll over in his grave like so many other Mary-Sue writers do. Perhaps some may even deem me to be using too harsh a term like Mary-Sue, but for the more cynical authors and authoresses like myself, I shan't give any bull such as "This is not a Mary- Sue, even if two girls are dumped into Middle-Earth" in my summary. My goal is to have others say this isn't a Mary-Sue, not to say that myself. Good day to you. I shall start the completely redone Chapter 1 now.  
  
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"Aww, man, that stinks!" Liberty Artlong whispered fervidly when her friend Olivia Gybczynski broke the news that she had neglected to ask her mom for permission to go to the local library, and the pizza place located down the street from the library. The girls had spoken about these plans the previous day, when Libby had revealed that the county meet that would be occurring marked the end of the track season. Today, Libby had an impending track meeting and practice which she would have cut had Olivia been able to go to get the pizza. Not even the steadily drizzling rain outside River City High School would not have made the two blonde friends cancel their plans. Libby Artlong was a sophomore and Olivia a junior, and they were both in the last class of the day, eighth period math with Dr. Quicke, a strict, slightly loopy figure whom Libby took a sadistic pleasure out of driving up a wall with her incessant chatter. Their class was unusually small for the school of 1200 students; only twelve were enrolled in eighth period math with Dr. Quicke.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Libby, maybe we can do something tomorrow!" Olivia said, her brown eyes displaying remorse.  
  
"I would love to, but I have a chem research paper due Tuesday... And I'm having a small slumber party Sunday into Monday, so I won't have time to do it then. I didn't exactly start the paper yet." Libby said with a sheepish smile. She was not too pleased with the prospect on doing a five- pager on the periodic tables, one of the most insipid topics Libby could imagine. They were paying no attention to the teacher's scribbling some of the day's notes concerning probability onto the blackboard, until Libby felt as if someone were staring at her. She turned her head to meet Dr. Quicke's characteristic angry glare.  
  
"Pay attention, both of you!" Dr Quicke said. He seemed to be in a bad mood, and Libby thought she knew why. After the late bell for first period, the tall and slender blonde had been gathering her materials for English and AP Euro when she heard the noise of what seemed to be an argument down the hall. Dr. Quicke was nearby, conversing with her chemistry teacher Dr. Mandos. Infuriated, Dr. Quicke stormed down the hall with a pernicious glower etched on his chocolate face, hollering at the two imbeciles to break it up. Recognizing the danger signs of possibly being disciplined, Libby hastily wrote some of the notes on a fresh sheet of loose leaf before taking up a piece of scrap paper and writing notes with Olivia. Somehow, the subject managed to metamorphose into Libby's childhood antics. Olivia's extremely slanted, fine script and Libby's wandering chicken-scratch print covered the page with their conversation.  
  
~I was a total delinquent as a child, Olivia! ~Lol I can imagine ;-) ~Wanna know some of the stuff I did? ~Sure! :-D ~Well, I had this one friend Libya who was also a bit of a prankster, right? ~Yeah? ~Yep. And like, there was this peach farm next door to the Apartments ~Really? Were the peaches any good? ~You bet they were, haha! I ate a lot of them.. Anyway, the said friend and I went there like all the time and stole some of the peaches and then sold them door to door. ~Lol! Were you ever caught? ~Nope, the farmer never found out who the little criminals stealing his peaches were. ~Lol! Did your mom catch you? ~Yeah. she was mad and told me she'd better not find out about my going on the farm again.. And Libya's mom said people could die from eating those peaches! ~WHAT?! Really? OMG did anything happen? ~Nope. no worm halves or poison or anything of that sort thank God. ~That's good! ~Yeah. there were unpleasant surprises sometimes though ~Like what? ~Well, the farmer's dog chased us both off the property once, and another time I accidentally put a piece of glass through my foot, surprisingly I didn't get any scars from that! ~Omg.. Yeowch! That must have really hurt! What other stuff did you guys do? ~So much.. I bet the other people expected to see detention centers in our future. I'll tell you whenever we get to go and get pizza. ~Okay! :-D Hahaha that really does sound like you Libby! :-P  
  
Libby and Olivia were forced to stop writing when Dr. Quicke got suspicious. Libby shoved the paper under her real math notes and showed the scribbles on probability to the teacher, professing, "See, I took the notes!" Dr. Quicke just frowned and made one of his usual empty threats to Libby, something about calling her mom and complaining, or talking to Commander. When the bell rang, Libby and Olivia ascended to their feet. Libby walked with Olivia to the locker of another friend of the latter girl's. Olivia did not know why, but this seemed significant, somehow. Once Olvia had returned what she had borrowed from her friend, Libby walked with Olivia and her sister Anne to the rear entrance. When Libby had seen them out the door and turned to head back in the direction of her locker, Olivia looked  
  
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As ROTC class had been canceled, Libby went directly to the track coaches' office. After a brief meeting and hearing that season for her and almost the rest of the team was indeed over, Libby messed around on the internet and AIM before the brief meeting, talking with her friend Violet, who had moved further east on Long Island. After the meeting, Libby left the school to head for the library, pulling the hood of her River City sweatshirt over her head. It was unseasonably cold and rainy for May 23rd, the last day before Memorial Day weekend. By all rights she shouldn't have even been obliged to attend school that day, but the students had been forced to make up a snow day. Rolling her eyes as some obnoxious tomfool characteristic of River City called "Hey, baby!" out his car window, she turned right into the library parking lot, quickening her pace so she could get into shelter out of the rain that was most likely causing her hair to frizz out of control. She had it crimped for the day, and as it was loose save for a headband holding it out of her face, there would be no concealing a sudden attack of the frizzies.  
  
To Libby's joy, the computer lab was virtually deserted, meaning she would be able to surf the Internet in peace without puerile chumps starting over her shoulder in an endeavor to read her e-mails or conversations. Clicking on the yellow AIM icon, she logged onto her screen name, RaspberryGal913. She was surprised to find that out of the 197 people on her buddy list, very few were online. Her friend Liz Rivers was on, like she had been in the morning, but her away message was up. Kyle Alvin's screen name KHrdCrDawg was also listed, but Libby was not in the mood to deal with her psychopath classmate, so she ignored the listed screen name. Kyle seemed to have had a crush on every member of her clique at least once, including herself. All of them save Liz at sporadic intervals found him a pestilence and tried to avoid him like the plague.  
  
Clicking the minimize button on her AIM window, Libby proceeded to open a few more windows, entering addresses to various Lord of the Rings fan books where she avidly scrutinized small details of the book with other rabid fans, and opened her e-mail inbox on Excite. She groaned slightly at the volume of messages still in there, a consequence of her going online being a rarity lately. Twenty-six non-spam messages to sift through. Libby clicked on the one inhabiting the top of the list and began reading, intermittently jumping to other windows to post on her favorite site. She was in the middle of a post acknowledging her regrets that she didn't live at closer proximity to Hershey, Pennsylvania, when an IM popped up from Liz Rivers. Apparently she had assumed her throne in front of the computer where she practically lived.  
  
Lizzl312005: Hey. RaspberryGal913: Hey, what's up? Lizzl312005: NM, u?  
  
Libby winced at the redundant Internet-speak. Libby abhorred the lazy version of IM conversation with a passion, but as Liz was her friend she tolerated it.  
  
RaspberryGal913: Not much. just being bored Lizzl312005: Same here. Lizzl312005: hey, whos coming 2 ur party anyway? RaspberryGal913: Cara and Traci. Sarah says she can't come cuz she got entirely too much schoolwork Lizzl312005: Yea she got a lot of hw RaspberryGal913: So do I, come to that.. I kind of have a researchj paper due Tuesday and I sorta kinda haven't started it yetr. RaspberryGal913: *research RaspberryGal913: *yet Lizzl312005: oh RaspberryGal913: Yeah. aargh. I'll be working like all day tomorrow on it!! Lizzl312005: Have fun RaspberryGal913: Yeah, right. School sucks hairy balls.  
  
Libby was relieved that Liz didn't seem to be displaying more bitterness about having not been invited to the very small sleepover she was throwing on Sunday. Guest limits suck.. Haha didn't know my parties were so desirable anyways!  
  
Lizzl312005: brb I gota pee! And eeeew ur sick! RaspberryGal913: kk  
  
Libby X'd out of the window containing the IM exchange and went back to her post, when she was interrupted again by a tap on the shoulder. She looked up over her shoulder and found herself eye to eye with her best friend of all time, April Neverton. The Asian girl was looking slightly better than she had a few days ago.. She no longer had dark smudges beneath her eyes showing the mental strain she'd been through the last months. She was in her black faux leather jacket and pants which laced up the sides, also in black.  
  
"Hey, April!" Libby said, with a smile. She pulled the chair from the computer next to her thanking her lucky stars the shrewish computer lab overseer was out of the room, and invited April to sit.  
  
"What are you doing?" April inquired, eying Libby's typed words in the window of the Lord of the Rings fan site. "Oh, of course it's Lord of the Rings.. First Harry Potter, now this, what's next?"  
  
"System of a Down.. You've gotten me addicted to that "Toxicity" CD!" Libby said with a laugh. The CD for some odd reason didn't work in her regular CD player, but it did play in her home computer, so she used that to fulfill her like for the music, deemed "too hard-core for my taste" by her friend Sarah Ross.  
  
"Good, that's exactly what I meant to do!" April said, stretching her legs out in front of her and crossing them. After a few minutes, in which Libby deleted the remainder of her e-mail and Liz did not return to her overused computer chair, the short black-haired 15-year-old asked, "Do you want to leave?"  
  
"Sure thing," answered Libby, shaking her golden hair out of her face, and clicking the "submit" button to her final post. The two girls ascended to their feet and marched out of the library. Libby, in her eagerness to finish the post, had missed the IM signaling Liz's return, when she had said, "Hello?? Libby???" and then, "I guess you don't want to talk to me. I guess goodbye for now, then."  
  
"You want to walk a different way?" Libby inquired. "My mom latened my curfew.. Don't have to be home until 5:30 now. It's still too early, but hey, it /is/ an improvement!"  
  
"Okay. how about we go along the railroad tracks to the bridge and then circle around to Pulaski and then walk that way?" April suggested, ducking inside for a glance at the clock then returning outside. "It's 4:30... The train doesn't come until 4:50, we'll be fine."  
  
"That works.. It isn't raining too bad.. Just drizzling," Libby replied agreeably, adjusting her fraying patchwork schoolbag over her shoulder. April also had her bookbag despite not having attended school since November. She kept other things like sketchbooks and poems in there instead.  
  
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Upon reaching the railroad trestle, April and Libby prepared to climb down from the bridge, when Libby spotted what looked like a purpled crystal imbedded in the timber. Nudging April, Libby pointed to it.  
  
"Hey, that looks awesome. should we try and get it out? It could come in handy." April asked, admiring the beauty of the crystal. It looked as if it were the sort of thing that could come in handy for a spell.. April was a Wiccan. She wrung her shoulder-length black hair with crimson highlight in the very front as she awaited Libby's answer.  
  
Libby chewed her lip slightly, before replying, "sure!" She stooped to attempt to pull out the crystal. This proved fruitless for both girls; the crystal remained stubbornly stuck.  
  
"Aargh, we need pliers or something. I'm pretty sure we have plenty of time to quickly go to my house and get a pair, it isn't even 4:50 yet I reckon, or a train certainly would have come by now," April cogitated. She wiggled the enticing crystal slightly, hoping to dislodge it.  
  
"I guess so.. Apparently the conventional wiggle it, pull it out isn't working in this case," said Libby, throwing up her hands in defeat. She didn't care to quite the extent April did, but it was pretty and besides, her friend wanted it. "Move your hands a sec." Libby lifted her right foot, ewhich was sore from the track meet of the previous day, and attempted to use it as a lever. No good, the crystal stuck fast. Sighing, Libby slipped her bare foot- she had taken off her annoying ped socks in the morning when they kept slipping down into the backless glittery-and- rhinestoned sneakers- back into the shoe.  
  
"That was worth a try," April said, ready to climb down the bridge with her friend to run for the pliers.  
  
"Here's an idea- maybe we could get it out doing it at the same time? Your boots are slightly pointed in front, you can maybe wedge the toe under the crystal, your feet are pretty small. And we can both grip it and pull."  
  
April glanced down at her slightly pointed flat boots. Libby /was/ raising a good idea. "I say we go for it.. But you'll just have to get the knees of your pants a little wet, I'm afraid." She knew Libby was loath to get any sort of wetness or dirt on the knees of her studded capris, which were among her favorite clothing items. the tracks were soggy from the steady drizzling that had persisted since mid-morning.  
  
Groaning her discontent at the prospect, Libby reluctantly dropped to her knees with her friend next to it in an awkward sitting position with one foot wedged underneath the crystal. If any motorists were coming down the deserted street, they would roll their eyes at the sight of two teenagers bending over what would look like nothingness from the angle below them.  
  
"On three, now," April said. A pair of pale hands and a pair of hands with the skin tone typical of Asians gripped the crystal, ready to pull. "We better watch out for unexpected falls should it come loose. one, two, THREE!" Tall blonde and short Asian alike heaved on the crystal. Suddenly, both of them felt as if an explosive force had hit them, and the world exploded into a mist of swirling colors of every part of the spectrum, circling all about them, engulfing them. To their amazement, they both acquired the sensation of their feet lifting from the ground, and they felt a sensation akin to as if they were flying. They were overcome with shock, wondering what on earth this phenomenon could be.  
  
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Without warning, their feet hit the ground with such force that a burst of pain shot up Libby's right ankle, overly abused from the winter and spring track seasons as she fell over. She inhaled sharply and winced very slightly.  
  
"Wow.. Guess we weren't expecting that." April commented, helping her friend to her feet. Libby cringed again as she gingerly put her weight on the ankle. Shin splints were a nuisance.. At least she could walk on it, it felt strong enough to support her, though it would hurt her.  
  
"Where ARE we?" Libby asked, looking all around at the completely unfamiliar terrain.  
  
"Hmm. good question. this is really weird. I guess there was something funny about the crystal.. Spirits in it or something," April mused contemplatively. "But whether good or bad I do not know."  
  
"What crystal?" Libby asked, staring at April as if her shorter friend had grown an extra head.  
  
"Crystal? It seems as if I were talking nonsense.. Those antidepressants they put me back on do that to me sometimes. And make me bitchy, so don't mind me if I ever get a funny turn or anything," April said.  
  
Libby gave her soul mate a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. They had both been put through entirely to much these past few months. For April life had been pure hell, while Libby had felt the heavy load of the prospect of her mom and herself being made homeless dumped onto her shoulders, as the new landlord had decided to be an immoral jackass.  
  
"Well, then. This is not good.. We dunno where we are! We're lost!" Libby groaned. She glanced all around. The area was filled with hills and they were situated on the highest one. /Definitely/ not River City, which was flat, barely above sea level, and which only had the sporadic woods and the polluted Peconic for natural landmarks. At least the main section of River City- other parts of the township had beaches and large woods, like Treading River and James Harbor. They were standing near stony walls.. This looked almost as if it were a ruins of Stonehenge or something! She also felt uncomfortably hungry.. She'd just nicked one of the lollipops out of her own fund raiser bag, plus eaten a pack of Little Debbies, for lunch. It had just been her and Claudia Jameson in the cafeteria, as Tia Teetermann had been absent. Tia and Claudia were friends of Libby's from ROTC class.  
  
April remained silent listening to Libby groan about their being lost. She debated revealing the heavy secret she had known for two weeks, ever since she had returned to River City, that Libby had not been warned of yet, but she decided to keep it to herself. All in good time, April decided firmly. It was best that they were together in one place than both alone in separate places. They were best friends, so it was only fitting. Besides, April had let Libby "choose" the place, although her memory would be wiped of any knowledge of the said place that she possessed beforehand, as had also been revealed to April. She had been warned, and that dream had confirmed her worst fears. Only a few things were left to April to decide with this knowledge: whether to make this event a morbid coincidence or explainable by being together. At least to those not with them. this was almost like a second chance, especially for herself. The dream had been the final impetus for her decision, and had prevented her from doing anything foolish.  
  
Suddenly, the two girls heard male voices, one deep, and the others high-pitched and squeaky. Alarmed, April pulled Libby behind a mound of rock and they impatiently waited for the sudden strangers to leave so they could step back out into the open and have a look around the premises.  
  
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The source of the voices that Libby and April were hearing was four hobbits and one man. Unbeknown to the two River City High students, the purple stone had transported them to the queer world of Middle-earth, onto the summit of the tallest of the Weather Hills, Weathertop. Two of the hobbits, a corpulent fellow named Samwise Gamgee, and a sharp-faced, hazel- eyed individual called Peregrin Took, had just returned from staking out the area and were now giving the account of their observations to Merry Brandybuck, who had rather bushy eyebrows, and the tall, cleft-chinned hobbit Frodo Baggins. Most eager for the information was the almost frighteningly tall Ranger, Aragorn, who was known as Strider to the hobbits, as he had been introduced in Bree. Aragorn sat down on a small boulder and crossed his mile-long legs listening to the tale.  
  
"Strider, there's a spring in this area, and there were footprints!" Pippin said, wringing his hands  
  
"And there has obviously been a recently kindled fire," Sam added, remembering the charred twigs, and then the neatly stowed firewood he had chanced to come upon. "Someone has to have been here."  
  
"Do you reckon it may have been Gandalf, Strider?" Frodo asked, his blue eyes sparkling with an expression of hope. He wondered who else could have recently paid a visit to a premises. Black Riders were unlikely to use a fire, being not truly alive, but tormented, purely evil wraiths.  
  
"I sure hope it was Gandalf!" Pippin said in a rather loud voice.  
  
"Shh," Strider chastised through his teeth. "We ought to keep our voices down, exercise caution. I feel a sense of unease, and Sauron's servants could be nigh at hand. In fact, it is likely, as the trinket is here, in Frodo's pocket." The Ranger made sure to keep his voice to such a low octave that the hobbits were obliged to lean it to detect what he was stating. He wished to impress upon them the serious danger of their situation, and they certainly needed his aid and protection.  
  
"But.. They don't know everything about the Ring and who has it, do they Strider? They can't pick out who has the Ring by sight, right?" Pippin imprudently asked, forgetting earlier adventures.  
  
"Don't mention it!" Frodo squeaked frantically. "We don't know who's listening!"  
  
"Frodo is corr-" Suddenly, Aragorn's voice stopped dead; he thought he had just picked up a quick intake of breath that did not belong to and of the hobbits. He listened for a few seconds, then continued, lowering his voice further. "He is correct, someone could be listening."  
  
The next sound came not from one of the five companions speaking, but a loud, high-pitched sneeze. Aragorn jumped to his feet like lightning, his gray eyes suddenly agitated.  
  
"Who's there?" Merry asked in a high treble, filled with sudden fright. Yet, he did not feel as he had at Bree, right before he had passed out or whatever he had done when he'd seen the Black Rider..  
  
Aragorn's eyes fell on a stony sort of wall. He reached it in four giant steps and disappeared around the wall. The hobbits heard a faint thud, and the ringing of a sword. "Who are you two? Speak, now!" Strider's voice came from around the wall. That meant that two of- something, had been listening to possibly the entirety of their conversation. The hobbits just hoped it wouldn't prove ill for them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~  
After what seemed an eternity, the voices still hadn't departed. They were saying very strange things, things which sounded familiar but neither girl could seem to figure out what the words meant. Words such as "caution" and "Sauron" and ring" and "Don't mention it, we don't know who's listening!" These words meant something to Libby, but she had absolutely no clue as to the reason, or even the reasons they sounded so familiar. Libby felt herself blanch as soon as listening was mentioned. Suddenly, she felt an urge to sneeze. She raised her hand to hold her nose, but too late. She sneezed her loud, high-pitched "ACH-CHOOIE!" The unidentified people went dead silent. Libby felt as if her heart had stopped. Why couldn't that have been her squeaky sneeze? Libby had exactly two types of sneezes: the deafening one and the tiny little squirt of a sneeze. April looked at Libby, her expression clearly saying, "Now you've really done it."  
  
"Who's there?" A high-pitched voice squealed. Before the girls could do anything, a tall man, rounded the stone and roughly jerked the two girls to their feet, causing a jolt of pain for Libby because of the sudden maltreatment to her knees. The man slammed both girls into a mound of rock and drew a long sword, holding it too close for comfort. "Who are you two? Speak, now!" Libby began shaking, wondering if the end for her and April had suddenly come just like that. April's face remained oddly stoic, Libby realized, though her stomach felt like it was flopping around inside the confines of her ribcage.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Author's note: So how do you like the ah, revamping of this story? Right now I'm only uploading the edited barebones, and then I'm going to develop my new idea to add to the plot of Libby and April's personal saga more. It may be a while yet until I upload a totally new chapter, so tell me if you want me to e-mail you with my progress. Feel free to post suggestions. Plus, I'll divert more focus to the canon characters, switching off POVs so that Libby and April aren't the only central characters. Expect a lot of Frodo in this phase, plus some Aragorn and some Sam. For those who have read the earlier edition, what do you think of the changes? Please enlighten me either here or after having read the later chapters. What do I need to work on more? How am I doing so far? Should I carry on or scrap this? 


	2. Attack on Weathertop

Author's note: Another chapter redone. I am going to leave a little note at the very top for every chapter that is lingering from the original edition, saying something along the lines of "Not yet edited." Please review! Or flame. Flames are welcome. Flames are funny. Flames amuse me.  
  
Mel and Liz: Thank you so much for reviewing, my luffly fellow Trelizers! *glomps Melsh and Lizzikins*  
  
Disclaimer: *whines* Do I have to do this? I hate disclaimers, I hates them, we hates them forever!  
  
"Speak," said the extraordinarily tall, weather-beaten, sinister- looking man, roughly shaking them, perhaps a little harder than he'd meant to, causing Libby another slight spasm of pain in her highly overused, overly abused ankle. The shin splints had eased up the previous weekend, but she had exerted herself a bit much at the county meets she'd attended Tuesday and Thursday. She hadn't even had to race Tuesday, but she had spent a good portion of the meet just wandering around the field, bleachers, and refreshments/bathroom area. Could she really have crossed the finish line just yesterday, just ten feet behind the last person who had earned a metal? So close, yet not close enough. Libby couldn't get over her berating herself; several of her friends had told her she was being too hard on herself when she'd told them earlier that day.  
  
Libby now felt as she were in an entirely different universe: and perhaps she was. This, and April's strange behavior, most likely a gift from the meds she was a prisoner of. "Give me your names, and where you hail from, and what the business of two girls who can't be more than twenty or so is here." Libby thought she could detect a strange emphasis on the word "girls." Was it a shocked tone or merely condescending?  
  
If she hadn't felt so stupefied, Libby would have laughed right out loud? More than twenty or so? Did he seriously think there was a possibility that she and April were older than their sixteen and fifteen years, respectively? Libby wasn't wearing any more makeup than her usual mascara, sparkly lip gloss, eyeliner, and eye-shadow. Nor was she wearing an exceptionally large amount of jewelry (at least not for her, as she often got wisecracks from others about how she could set off metal detectors with all the jewelry on her wrists, fingers, ankles, around her neck, and in her ears.), or particularly mature clothes (patchwork studded capris, and a fancy 3-quarter sleeve shirts were not unusual attire for the fashionista, nor were her glittery, rhinestone-studded slip-on sneakers) or hairstyle. Her hair was crimped, down, and kept out of her face with a headband, but that was a style Libby wore at least once every two weeks or so, whenever she could muster up the free time. April was clad in her usual black, this time her leather lace-up pants and her black guess shirt with the enormous sparkly butterfly on the front. Her hair was loose, and she wore a choker, bracelet, and a ring on both her ring fingers and her left index finger.  
  
The man impetuously shook the girls again, causing April to accidentally graze the side of her face against a rough, protruding piece of rock. The teenager's face began to bleed from the fresh scrape. "Are you going to speak and tell if you are friend or foe or will I have to bind you or more?" Libby felt dizzy with fear- this was a madman!- and watched April's face etiolate. She had never been physically threatened like this- this was much worse than the incident involving a girl who had attacked her because she had heard a false rumor that Libby had been gossiping about her cousin. The girl at least had been shorter.. Sturdily built, maybe, but at least shorter than herself (though not April), not to mention unarmed. Finally screwing up her quailing courage, Libby said, a quiver in her slightly deep (for a teenaged girl) speaking voice, "Um.. My name is Liberty Artlong, but I er, normally go by Libby. My friend here is April Neverton, please don't hurt her." Libby had always felt slightly protective towards the younger girl: despite the age difference of only six and a half months, Libby was one grade higher than April. "We're only sixteen, not 'twenty or so'" Libby knew she was starting to seem slightly impertinent bout couldn't help it; her mouth had always been one of her personality flaws, even when she'd been a little kid. "We're from River City.. Can you please release us?"  
  
To the girls' utmost surprise, the man complied to Libby's request, and he tore off a small, relatively clean piece of cloth from his cloak and handed it to April, presumably for her scratch. April held it to her face, and then the normally taciturn girl asked, "Why were you hurting us?" There was the faintest of nervous quivers in her tone, though she maintained a fearless front.  
  
"My apologies," said the man, "but you can't be too careful these days. However, I do sense, apart from your being kids, that you're at least slightly trustworthy. I will be keeping my eye on you two, though. Tell me.. Where are your parents? How did you two come to be here? And why are you dressed in such a queer manner? Your attire is quite unlike the norm of Men, or any races that I can speak of."  
  
"Er. How did we come to be here?" Libby screwed up her face in thought, trying to remember. She sighed with frustration, having suddenly felt as if her mind had been wiped of all she ever knew. She no longer felt as if the man was somebody she knew from somewhere, and began to feel alarmed again. April, from her demeanor, was experiencing the same sort of feelings, although she had an unidentifiable emotion mixed in with the confusion on the face; one unlike what Libby had ever seen on her friend's face. "I- I suddenly don't remember!" Her blue eyes studied her own outfit and April's, and she suddenly felt extremely out of place, as if she belonged in a different sort of outfit; perhaps a dress or skirt. This was odd, as Libby had never actually wanted to wear what she haughtily deemed "overly girlie clothes." Names remained in her mind, names other than Libby Artlong and April Neverton, names she couldn't attach any significance to. "I was in a graveyard" Libby blanched. What was she talking about? What graveyard? "And then I was here. Both of us. I just don't know.." The girl inadvertently shivered, from a combination of agitation and from the cold of the October air. She had dressed for a day at the end of May, on the cusp of finals season. "It's almost as if we're in a different time." Even as she spoke, Libby knew she sounded absurd, possibly demented.  
  
"I am called Strider," said the man, a shadow of a sympathetic smile flitting across his sober expression. Were these two girls perhaps orphans, like himself? Were they hungry, in need of a home or shelter or protection? The Ringwraiths were abroad, and Aragorn did not want to leave these girls to wander about in vain. It seemed cruel to bring females into possible danger, but death was almost a certainty for them if they were abandoned again. The girls showed no signs of having any helpful weapons or food on them. They did not appear to have been in the Wild a long time, as they were completely kempt in appearance, though they seemed damp for some reason. But were they trustworthy? That bothersome question was the principal dilemma.  
  
"Can you cope with danger?" Aragorn found himself asking. April and Libby exchanged surprised looks. Danger? What was this man Strider on about? The two girls had dealt with unpleasantness in the form of bullies and results of their own foolhardy wanderings, but the man seemed to be talking about a more serious kind of danger; both felt a sense of foreboding within themselves.  
  
"Can you please." April's voice suddenly trailed off as a surprised gape crossed her expression. Libby averted her attention to where April's attention was focused, and the gawking was immediately explained. Four barefoot people, who were no taller than children of around six or seven years of age, had suddenly come up behind Strider. They did not have the faces of children, but adults in the prime of life. Asides from size, the girls also noted other peculiarities in the appearances of these newcomers. Their ears were rather large and pointed on top, and they wore no shoes. Their feet were covered on the tops with what looked like curly hair.  
  
"What are you?" Libby flushed, suddenly realizing the impudence of her query. She didn't know what these people, or creatures, as the case may be, were, but "Who are you?" would have been a more respectful question for suddenly meeting strangers. The one who appeared the youngest of them all laughed, sympathizing with the quickness of the blonde girl's tongue. It seemed that he had something in common with the tall blonde. The sharp- faced creature was the hobbit Pippin.  
  
"Strider, perhaps we should know what is going on?" asked another creature, who was standing directly next to the pointed-faced Halfling: he couldn't have been much older. He was taller, with a more oblong face. Halfling: the name had come to Libby out of thin air.  
  
Aragorn laughed, a rarity for the stern man. "Keep your voices down," he muttered. "The fellow who just asked me to explain everything is Meriadoc Brandybuck, although we just call him Merry. His littler friend here is Peregrin Took, also known as Pippin. Those two lagging behind are Frodo Baggins," Libby noticed that Strider's voice had dropped especially low upon mention the name of Frodo Baggins, "and Samwise, or Sam, Gamgee. Frodo is the tallest of the hobbits, with a thin build, not unlike yourself, er, tall blonde, and Sam is the plumper one."  
  
Libby smirked slightly, this time insulting herself alone. Thin? Libby had always felt chubby, especially when stepping on the scale. Even her mom insisting that extraordinarily dense bones ran in the family failed to prevent her from feeling as if she needed to diet, or exercise more vigorously. Lately, Libby was resorting to very drastic measures indeed in her endeavor to lose excess weight. Shaking off her annoyingly automatic putting herself down, Libby said, " Hi, erm. Maris, Pippy, Frodo, and Sam? No, Merry and Pippin, and Frodo and Sam, sorry, I suck at names. I'm Liberty, but /I/ go by Libby." Libby shook her head slightly, trying to clear out the cobwebs.  
  
"And I'm April, April Neverton" added the petite Asian, smiling at Libby's fumbling over the names of the hobbits. The younger ones, evidently Merry and Pippin, were sniggering slightly from the errors in their names. "You can also call Libby Libbers."  
  
Libby scowled at April, that was the name April gave her every time she fumbled over the memory of someone else's identity. After completing her feigned indignation, Libby retorted, "Okay, whatever, Ape." Ape was actually a nickname dating back from when Libby had been an eighth grader and April a seventh. They had both been members of the Library Club in River City Middle School, and they and a third friend called Violette called each other only by the first syllables of their names, thus transforming into Ape, Lib, and Vi.  
  
A small smile appeared on April's face, followed by hearty chuckling. At the same time, Libby went into peals of giggling. As the small, timid titter from the more solemn April equaled one of Libby's frequent giggling fits, booms of laughter from April were literally the equivalent of helpless convulsions in Libby. Aragorn smiled to himself a bit as he watched the girls' mirth, but at the same time felt a sense of trepidation. Now he had six charges on his hands, four including those who ages were the equivalent with youngsters in his eyes, and the elder two merely more frivolous than was good for them. Even Frodo and Samwise still seemed to throw caution to the winds sometimes, and he felt as if no good would come of it. Although the joyfulness of the young often warmed one's heart, it grieved him to know that evildoers such as Sauron and the Ringwraiths got a sadistic pleasure out of tormenting people like his companions. Sauron preferred the miserable, wretched, and enslaved over the merry-making free.  
  
Suddenly, the hobbit called Frodo gave a frightened cry, seizing a hold of Strider's arm and pointing downwards. April and Libby immediately desisted and looked in the direction. Five black shapes were converging below, and a sense of cold filled the pit of Libby's stomach. Strider flung himself down, pulling Frodo on the left and April on the right with him. Merry and Libby immediately followed suit. Libby winced slightly as she misstepped in her descent, slightly jolting her temperamental ankle. Merry's attention focused on the blonde for a fleeting second before reverting his attention to the black shapes. Although Libby and April were staring bemusedly at the shapes, the others knew within their hearts what the shapes were: Black Riders, the notorious Ringwraiths of Mordor. All the two teens from the early twenty-first century knew was that the shapes seemed to denote peril.  
  
"What is it?" April whispered apprehensively, ironically at the same moment as Frodo. At any other time, April would have found amusement in saying the same exact thing as somebody else simultaneously, but instinct told her this was not a time for noise. Thus she kept her tongue in check, merely waiting to see what would happen. Okay, April, calm yourself. it could just be those meds giving me another slap in the face. Perhaps none of the others are this worried.  
  
"I do not know, but I fear the worst," Strider replied, answering the question of Frodo and one of many for April. Libby raised herself on her elbows slightly, catching her friend's eye and mouthing, "What does he mean by the worst?" She hoped she didn't mean what her common definition of the worst was. April cringed and shook her head in reply.  
  
Watching the shapes, Strider caught the movement of the two teenagers out of the corner of his eyes, and hissed, "Keep still!" April and Libby complied, going flat on the land once again. After a few eerie moments, Strider spoke again, in no more than a whisper. His sharp eyes had confirmed his fears. "Without a doubt, the enemy is here! What a mercy Merry and Sam returned right before we found these two girls!" His eyes fell on them, taking in the faces of utmost confusion. I'll explain when and if it's safe," he hissed, before falling silent. He thought about what they could do trapped atop of the ancient watch-tower, then said, "Come. Follow me." The six companions crept down the northern side of Weathertop, Libby walking with a limp because slopes caused her discomfort in her bum ankle. Besides, River City, unlike this unknown terrain, was flat and not very high above sea level.  
  
"What is it? Will someone please explain what is going on here?" Libby asked, impatiently and slightly louder than she meant to. April clapped a hand over Libby's mouth, releasing her hand after a few seconds. Her friend was definitely being rather imprudent.  
  
"Not so loudly," Strider warned, despite knowing that April had done so by muzzling her friend. "I'll explain everything. April, Libby, come, walk on either side of me." As April walked on Aragorn's left and Libby his right, Strider recounted the stories of the Ringwraiths as briefly as he could while still including all the vital details. except the Ring itself, and Frodo's perilous mission. All in good time, he thought to himself. The hobbits, Sam in particular, still seemed to have slight doubts to his own reliability, and he wasn't yet sure of the honesty and caution of the girls. Libby, in particular, seemed to speak and act before thinking. April seemed more withdrawn, more cautious, not unlike himself, but Libby seemed to be a free spirit, perhaps a mischievous sort not unlike Merry and Pippin. Chances were she could draw out another side of April, their friendship seemed close like that. Libby's intentions boded to be benign, yet, there was always the possibility of the girl letting something slip which could prove dire for the whole group. He would have to wait and see. Perhaps April would call a more demure side to Libby and not the reverse, more dangerous possibility.  
  
Libby shuddered as Strider told the tale of the malevolent specters. What on earth had she and April gotten themselves into? How did they find themselves in this clinch in the first place? She knew she had screwed up before, but never this badly, and the worst was, she didn't even know what her mistake was! Slip of the tongue? Overactive curiosity? She felt a fondness growing for these people, but she detested the danger. She liked adventure, but this was really a bit much for her taste. Her idea of risking her neck extended to riding even the wildest of carnival rides, but on those at least there was no chance of anyone being after her blood.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~  
  
As night begin to fall, the hobbits and Strider began to debate whether to remain on Weathertop for the night or not. Frodo seemed particularly distressed, especially after Strider said, "The Ring draws them." Did that mean a ring was involved in this scrape? April nudged Libby, pointing to each of the eight fingers bearing a ring, and smiled. Beneath her ribbing exterior, April felt confused and more than a little suspicious. Libby rolled her eyes and pointed out the three April had on.  
  
"Libby, you're attracting the enemy," April ribbed, in the tone which Libby knew displayed the fact that she was kidding. "I do believe you took my ring advice for if we should ever wind up in another fight a little /too/ seriously."  
  
"Oh, stop, it could as easily be one of yours, and only two of mine actually have stones," Libby said. Both girls tittered before remembering caution and growing sober again. They were also slightly anxious by Frodo's conduct. "Is there no escape, then? If I move, I'll be seen and hunted! If I stay, I'll draw them to me!" the hobbit was lamenting in a spooked manner.  
  
"It's him, then," April mouthed, nodding towards Frodo and then glancing at Strider, who had laid a hand on the small being's shoulder. Strider pointed out a pile of wood ready for a fire, then mentioned that the Riders feared fire, like all animals. Apparently there was a lot more about Frodo than anyone was letting on to them. They were keeping secrets. But then, they had just encountered each other, almost nobody ever made snap decisions to trust a person.  
  
"It is also like a good way of saying 'we are here" Sam muttered audibly, not convinced in the least. Libby privately agreed with the timid hobbit, although she didn't admit this out loud.  
  
After the group had reached the decision to stay, they prepared a meager meal. When Pippin complained of the frugal ration, Frodo pointed out that they only had a small food supply. Libby felt a slight twinge of guilt, knowing that herself and April were two more mouths to feed. The girls were to travel with the four hobbits and the peculiar, yet benevolent- seeming, man. Strider had warned them that they would be walking extraordinary distances, and said, "I hope you two are in somewhat decent physical shape."  
  
"We walk everywhere. all over town," April had said, grinning, "from when Libby gets out of her last class to five. At least we did before stuff happened, her sports and such."  
  
"Yeah, I'm on the school track team," Libby had confirmed, once more feeling as if she were talking about a separate life and a whole other world. She lifted up her right heel slightly and rolled her foot in an effort to stretch her sore shin as she spoke. Oddly, those shin splints had only affected this one foot. Aragorn nodded as he listened to April and Libby talk about things he did not know. Different culture? He'd have to ask them to explain later if they got around to it. Either April and Libby came from quite the prosperous family, judging by the amount of jewelry they donned, or their whole area of living was well-to-do. Their backgrounds were a mystery, and it could be useful to find out more about their history if there was time. For now, they were just doubts and curiosities. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~  
  
As the frigidity of the weather increased and the darkness of night fell, the hobbits, April, and Libby huddled close to the fire. The hobbits wrapped themselves in every garment they possessed, while Strider was content with a cloak. Even Libby, who did not get cold so easily as she did overheated, was shivering, leaning against April, who, despite her heavy suede jacket, was little more comfortable. Noting the lack of wraps for the two girls, Strider gave them two spares out of his pack for them to make use of. April and Libby laid one atop of the other, and huddled underneath the makeshift cloak.  
  
"Would you like to hear some stories?" Strider asked, hoping to lighten the mood. His companions, especially April and Libby, vehemently answered in the affirmative. Libby and April had the mindset of hoping to learn more about this sudden quest. After a few tales concerning Elves and Men in what Strider called the "Elder Days," Merry asked if Strider knew more of somebody called Gil-Galad. Apparently, Strider had previously mentioned this person, before April and Libby had turned up.  
  
"I do indeed, and so does Frodo, for it concerns us closely." Most of the companions save Sam glanced at Frodo, who seemed to be glancing within the depths of the roaring fire, deep in thought.  
  
"I only know what I learned from Gandalf," Frodo finally mused, slowly. "Everyone, Gil-Galad was the last of the great Elf-Kings of Middle- earth. He is called Starlight in Elvish. With the Elf-Friend Elendil, he wend to the land of.."  
  
Just as Frodo was about to name the mysterious land, Strider told Frodo not to name the place with the servants of the Enemy at hand. Sam asked for a different tale, and Aragorn began a song of Beren, Luthien, the Silmarils. It was at this point that April and Libby finally learned the name of the Enemy: Sauron.  
  
Suddenly, Merry sprang to his feet, earnestly saying, "Look, it is getting very late!" As everyone else looked up, they saw something cold and dark, and felt a sense of dread over their hearts. The hobbits began to speak of "something creeping up the side of the slopes," and the sense of foreboding returned in full measure. At the mention of black shapes, Strider instructed the group to keep close to the fire, facing outwards, torches ready. They bunched around in fire just in time. Tall black figures appeared on the slope, bearing down on them. Libby felt a sense of chill, before fear came over her and she and April gripped each other, quaking, waiting for the certain end. April's heart sank, wondering if she had blown this already. 


	3. Of Endless Waits and Storytelling

Author's note: I have nothing important to say at the moment, other than imploring you to review my story. The lack of reviews is rather depressing, particularly since it takes me ages to type up each of these chapters. Happy reading. Peace, love, and Baggins!  
  
Disclaimer: I own naught. My best friend Linda owns me. (Heeheeheehee, feel special, Linda! ~^.^~)  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~*~Chapter 3~*~  
  
Quivering, clutching her best friend's arm, overcome with terror, Libby watched the other members of their small traveling band with wide blue-gray eyes as she silently willed the accursed black forms to leave. She bitterly hoped that they would miraculously depart, leaving the seven travelers in peace.  
  
Unfortunately, this was not the case. The black shapes continued to advance, drawing their swords. Libby gulped, desperately wishing she and April were armed. Fists certainly would not suffice in this case. Libby had taken self-defense in gym, but she somehow thought that the "rules" were different if the other had a weapon and she didn't. In other words, we're screwed unless April or I somehow twist a sword away from them.. Best we can do is stab them back with our fading strength.  
  
April was hardly less petrified than her blonde counterpart, and her small fists were trembling. She yearned to go in for a punch, but felt as if an invisible force were rooting her to the spot where she should. Her knees felt like jelly, and her legs trembled as she struggled to remain upright. On a sudden impulse, she seized a hold of Libby's right wrist, gripping for dear life. Her friend's fingers curled in response, gripping her back around the dully-spiked bracelet on April's own wrist, making small indentations in her palms.  
  
Merry and Pippin, the two youngest hobbits in the group, the youngest beside herself and April, launched themselves flat on the ground. For a fleeting second, Libby was tempted to follow suit, before common sense informed her that that action would be to no avail. Instead, the two were forced to helplessly witness the attack, still clutching each others' wrists in death grips. Sam shrank to the side of the hobbit Frodo, who was visibly shivering as if suddenly finding himself thrust into a cold climate without a coat. Suddenly, shockingly, Frodo seemed to disappear into thin air. April was still watching Merry and Pippin, feeling pity for the two Halflings while feeling as if she would fall to pieces from dread, but Libby was staring at the empty space which Frodo had been standing just a moment before, flabbergasted. She had just enough composure remaining for her jaw to drop in a gape at the discombobulating spectacle.  
  
The five towering figures, which appeared to be empty cloaks, immediately headed for the vacant space. Sam suddenly tumbled to the turf, either from being knocked aside or his knees buckling, as one of the fell creatures passed him by. April blinked to see if her eyes were in working order, wondering why it had left Sam in peace in lieu of ending the hobbit's life on Middle-Earth that very instant. Was her illness jumbling her mind again? She did not notice Libby fall forward onto her knees as they gave way, no longer able to support her weight.  
  
After hearing what sounded like a high-pitched shriek of death, which Libby thought was imprisoned in her own head, a hallucination of the panic, Strider had leapt forward, a flaming torch in both his hands, lighting the cloaks of the deadly figures aflame. Libby's mouth was still agape, her expression shocked. It was April's voice that brought her back to the present, rousing her from her trance.  
  
"Are. are y-you okay?" April stammered, looking dreadfully shaken, her Asian complexion sallow with fear. She pulled Libby to her feet- to her surprise, Libby realized that her knees had given way on her and she hadn't even felt the lurch of discomfort as her overused joints struck the ground. The tremulous tenderness returned in full measure to the shins, shooting down from her knees, slightly exacerbated from hitting the stone, as April had helped her stand back up. Merry, Sam, and Pippin had also extracted themselves from the ground, and Pippin started pacing around, perhaps hoping he could rid himself of the horror of what had just occurred merely by walking it off.  
  
"Yah!" Pippin had suddenly staggered over something, and was now lying flat on his face. His friend Merry pulled him up and gave a gasp of horror after seeing what Pippin had literally stumbled over. It was Frodo, and he appeared lifeless from the angle in which Libby and April were standing. He was motionless, and didn't appear to be breathing. The hobbit was facedown on the grass, and his sword was underneath his prone figure. The senseless hobbit appeared deathly pale, and a twisting of the features conveyed the message that the hobbit had suffered severe pain upon fainting or dying, whichever he had done..  
  
"Mr. Frodo! Oh, my master!" Sam had given an anguished cry. "Oh no, oh, dear! What are we to do?" The horrified hobbit's face was haggard, worry outlined in his face. The small creature dropped to his knees, bending over his friend's limp form, seizing a hold of Frodo's hands. "His left hand- it's very cold!" The hobbit Merry prodded it with his finger, and his heart sank as he found that Sam was right. The small hand felt as if it had been freshly drawn out of a vat of a substance colder than ice, liquid nitrogen or such.  
  
"My- God," Libby muttered with discomfiture, gazing at the unconscious figure of Frodo Baggins, still in a state of shock. "He's not dead, is he?" the tall blonde added fearfully, voicing the dread everyone else shared. Aragorn swiftly walked over to the bunch of companions and bent over Frodo, studying the hobbit intensely. The Ranger passed a hand over Frodo's cyanotic lips to seek the faintest whisper of breath, and cautiously explored the whole of the small body with his eyes and hands. One gently prodding finger discovered a small tear in his shirt on the left shoulder. The Ranger felt a nefarious sort of sense radiating form the area, his Numenorean ancestry coming into play with this activated sixth sense. Drawing aside the slightly travel-worn cloak and tunic, Strider revealed what appeared to be a small puncture wound on his left shoulder with blood slowly oozing from it at a rate slower than expected from a stab wound in that region. Ripping off a clean piece of cloak, Aragorn applied gentle pressure to the wound to stave off the hemorrhaging flow of blood. The leakage let up relatively quickly, almost as if what Frodo had obtained was merely a small slash from paper or aluminum foil.  
  
"He's not dead, but alas, he is in a very bad way," Strider purported brusquely, stroking the left arm of Frodo, which already had an additional cold feeling to it. "Pick him up, somebody, Libby, April, Merry, Pippin, Sam, one of you, and lay him near the fire. I'll return presently." With a shrewd glance lingering on April and Libby, Strider debated whether to ask the two girls to accompany him. The Ranger was unsure whether to have confidence in Libby Artlong and April Neverton, and was pondering whether they ought to be left alone with the hobbits and the helpless Frodo. Suddenly realizing that the girls, unlike the hobbits, were unarmed, he decided that if they did have ill intentions and attempted anything, Merry, Sam, or Pippin would be able to resolve that without much effort, as they had the swords. "Be careful, all of you." At that, Strider disappeared into the blackness of night.  
  
Libby attempted to lift Frodo by herself, as she was the tallest and weighed the most of all there, but found that Frodo was too heavy for her to lift easily, unaided. She was thin, despite her weight, as most of her weight came from the density of her bones and her powerful legs. She definitely had some noticeable flab on her, predominantly around the midriff and her arms, but she was nevertheless thin. "April, help me!" April came over and helped Libby lift Frodo off the ground, and then the black-haired girl bore most of Frodo's dead weight in her arms while Libby supported him so April wouldn't inadvertently drop him. They began ambling towards the fire at a dawdling pace, for Libby was obliged to bend down pretty far so her arms would be at the same level as her considerably shorter friend. When the girls came to the fireside, April and Libby gently sank to their knees and set Frodo on the ground. The hobbit's head lolled to the side and he did not stir. Merry, Pippin, and Sam followed them and the five companions bent over their motionless friend. Frodo did not appear much better even from the heat; his face was beginning to have a sallow hue to it. Libby noticed that Frodo's diminutive fist seemed to be clutching something tightly, but she decided that she didn't really care what it was. Perhaps Frodo, not unlike herself, had the tendency to clench his fists when angry or in pain. The blonde often had hints of nail-marks in her palms from her form of anger management. More than usual lately, Libby had found herself clenching her fists, fighting back the urge to sock a solid object such as her bookcase at home.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
After what seemed like ages of speculations about what would happen to the injured hobbit, Frodo began to sob slightly, more of the small vestige of color departing from his already anemic face. Libby thought that he seemed to be coming to, but the hobbit appeared to be in the throes of a nightmare, thrashing and moaning. Libby rested her hand on Frodo's left arm, and with a jerk of her stomach, she noticed that it was stone cold. This was most likely what the others had spoken of previously. Recoiling, she thoughtfully mused, "I think we ought to add more wood to the fire," thinking that perhaps the sick hobbit was catching a chill. Merry and Pippin immediately got to their feet, in order to fetch some more wood. Pippin, who had been sitting between Merry and Libby, didn't noticed that Libby's legs were stretched out straight in front of her, and he accidentally blundered over the tall girl's right ankle. "AIEE!" Libby began grousing impulsively, before April clapped a hand over her mouth. Taking a deep breath, Libby managed to calm down and ignore the fresh wave of pain in her shin.  
  
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry, Libby, I wasn't watching where I was going," Pippin said. Libby struggled to her feet and patted Pippin on the top of his head. "It's okay, Pippin, really, I'll help you guys out." Merry, Pippin, and Libby began walking around the environs, leaving April and Sam to watch Frodo. The three of them began picking up large piles of sticks and firewood, the three walked back to the fire. When they returned within earshot of Sam and April, Merry suddenly realized that Libby appeared to be walking with a limp. It was the second or third time he'd spotted her walking in an odd manner within the twelve or so hours they'd been together.  
  
"Excuse me, Libby, but why do you walk so oddly?" Merry asked, his brown eyes staring at Libby's steps. She seemed to be favoring her right ankle over her left, and trying to conceal it.  
  
Libby forced a hollow chuckle. She knew she was shuffling her steps and her ankle was spastically turning inward every now and then, but she wasn't about to fall into her habit of complaining with Frodo lying by the fire showing no signs of life besides his rapid, shallow breaths. "Oh, I dunno, I didn't know I was walking weirdly."  
  
Pippin's hazel eyes also noticed Libby's wobbly gait, and he knew she wasn't being entirely truthful about how she was walking. "I didn't hurt you, did I, Libby? I'm sorry if I did."  
  
Libby gave Pippin a strained smile. "No, you didn't, it's okay, I'm okay" She quickened her steps and threw the entire pile of firewood onto the pile where she'd formerly been sitting, busying herself with tossing each piece of wood one by one on the fire. She was no expert at living in the wilderness; her only experience had been the week and a half of living at Camp Star Lake, one of the more annoying weeks of her life. She had not appreciated sleeping on the wooden floor of a lean-to in a sleeping bag much too short for her. It would have suited someone of April's stature well, but even though Libby had only been thirteen then, she had already hit the height of five-foot-six and a half, which was certainly taller than the average woman. Mosquitoes, campfires, wood-gathering, preparing food, five-minute showers, and the lack of a soft mattress was not a sort of lifestyle that agreed with somebody of Libby's temperament, which was on the priggish side. This situation she was in now, in comparison, made Camp Star Lake look like a five-star hotel. This time, mortal danger was in the mix, none of them had sufficient warmth other than the fire, and rations were scanty. This was like her NJROTC textbook's survival unit come to life- if only she had bothered to memorize the chapter doing the term paper, rather than just altering the text from the book and selecting random facts!  
  
"That's because she was already hurt from yesterday.," April put in, getting up and starting to help Merry and Pippin with the wood. When the wood had all been piled onto the flames, the whole lot of them knelt around Frodo, once more.  
  
"What did you do, Libby?" Pippin asked, to break the foreboding silence as all gazed upon Frodo's prone form.  
  
"What do you mean?" Libby asked, frowning, having put the conversation about her limp out of her mind as she gazed upon the unconscious hobbit's small body, silently willing him to come around.  
  
"How'd you hurt yourself yesterday?" Merry added, obviously wondering the same thing as his other half, Pippin.  
  
"Well, let's just say I speed walked a little too hard," Libby replied curtly. Yes I still wasn't good enough.  
  
"Why did you walk too fast?" Merry asked. Libby frowned, thinking that Merry was implying that she'd stumbled deliberately.  
  
"I kind of had to, it was a race with rather high stakes!" Libby repeated impatiently. She wasn't a huge fanatic when it came to repeating herself, and she had thought that saying that it was speed walking too fast was kind of obvious. Merry reminded Libby of her inquisitive friend Traci, whom Libby loved to death, but often was annoyed by when she sought a bit too much detail for Libby's liking.  
  
Merry frowned, seeming a little put-off by Libby. He was still confused, but decided against asking more questions, as Libby was evidently in a standoffish mood. "I'm sorry, Merry, I'm just so scared." Libby said, biting her lip. Once again, her temper had gotten the better of her, and in front of somebody she barely even knew! That was sure to give a good impression of her mien.  
  
"Hey, I think Frodo is waking," Sam said, speaking for the first time in a long while after he had recounted a black shadow slithering past him, his voice filled with utmost relief. It was true, Frodo's blue eyes had just flickered open, pained and confused.  
  
The ashen hobbit stared blankly up at his companions, who were bending over him, through a kind of mist, and then he spoke, making no sense whatsoever. "What has happened? Where is the pale king?" he asked, going wild-eyed  
  
Libby gawped at Frodo, perplexed. "S-sorry? I'm sorry, you're just making no sense." After a while, they learned that after he had vanished- Libby noticed that Frodo didn't mention what made him vanish, although she was wondering if it was the odd thing mentioned earlier- the Black Riders had come into extremely clear focus, at least for him. He had drawn his sword as three figures swiftly advanced toward him, their eyes seeming to bore holes through him. The tallest of the three bolder Black Riders had a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, with the dagger-hand and the knife itself glowing with a pale, ominous light. As Frodo had stabbed at the foot of the crowned Rider with his sword, he had felt an icy, yet burning pain pierce his left shoulder, and he said he'd "reappeared" as he'd passed out.  
  
There was a pregnant pause. Libby, filled with curiosity, wished to make inquiries about what Frodo meant by "disappear" and "reappear," but decided against it when she remembered that she had always been annoyed by overly intrusive people, no matter how good a friend they were. If she wanted to tell somebody something about herself, she would. April knew things about her nobody else did while barely asking a question. Even if she began to pry, it was so subtly that April, the dearest of friends, seldom vex Libby. April surely had her flaws, and Libby could pick them out if asked, but none of them considerably irritated Libby Artlong, a girl notorious among her friends for her rapid mouth and short fuse coated with gasoline or some other flammable substance.  
  
"Where has Strider gotten to?" Sam mused, stroking Frodo's curls as his friend moaned with agony. He was beginning to wonder, once again, if Strider was really trustworthy; the man had a foul appearance to him, and a shady, secretive demeanor. Frodo shook his head, not really focused on his surroundings. He desired to just slip into the darkness that seemed to be enclosing him. "Don't let go, Mr. Frodo," Sam muttered. "Don't leave us, don't leave your Sam."  
  
Merry, noticing that Frodo seemed ill at ease and in pain, decided to turn the focus off him and onto somebody else. "Libby, are you sure you're okay? Let us see your knees."  
  
"What are you talking about, Merry?" Frodo asked weakly, summoning some of his strength and turning his head to glance at first Merry, then Libby.  
  
Libby felt heated annoyance stirring within herself, but then she glanced at Frodo, whose attention was now on her, rather than his misery. Her embarrassment evaporated as she suddenly realized that she could possibly distract him from his pain.  
  
"Okay, but it really isn't a pretty sight," Libby admitted. April moved closer to her friend, as Libby had not yet shown off the track injury to her. She rolled her left capri leg above her knee, wincing slightly as the back of one of the silver studs chafed the contusion on her knee.  
  
"Interesting colors," April, remarked, and Libby chuckled slightly. Merry and Pippin also managed to crack the smallest of smiles, but Sam and Frodo remained solemn. "Got the gangsta look going on there with the leg rolled up, you know? Too bad you're not wearing long pants."  
  
Libby snorted, surprised that her usually staid friend was making wisecracks about things besides their most twisted of inside jokes, April was normally serious except about certain topics that tended to alarm people such as the preps in her school. "I know, right? I just need the bandanna, too, this is more liked a screwed-up gangsta look." Libby rolled up her other pant leg. "There, now I'm wearing the kind of shorts which went out with the 1980s. Seriously, I've seen pictures of tight shorts this length in my really old editions of Teen magazine. My gosh, I hope my hair doesn't wind up looking like them, though if I never wash it again, I will resemble a West Side Story gangster. Oh, and I forgot the weapons they loved to carry on them to finish each other off, I need one of those switchblades they love. lucky for us that girl in my grade, you know who I mean, didn't have anything on her when she started messing with us, or we'd have kinda been screwed big time, and her threat wouldn't have been empty."  
  
The hobbits exchanged mystified looks as Libby and April had their practically one-sided conversation, filled with slang terms of teenagers of the River City High student body. They didn't have the faintest inkling what the terms West Side Story, Teen magazine, gangstas, bandanna, screwed, screwed-up, or "the gangsta look" meant, and they were utterly perplexed. As the Common Speech of Middle-Earth was filled with idioms confusing to April and Libby, such were the slang terms of 21st century high-schoolers.  
  
"The 1980s aren't for many decades from now," Pippin pointed out, chortling. Libby frowned, once again perplexed. "Didn't Strider say that this was 3018?"  
  
"To him, yes," Pippin confirmed, "but I'm talking about Shire- reckoning, where it's the year 1418."  
  
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Shire-reckoning?" Libby said, frowning with confusion. The term seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it. "What are you talking about?"  
  
At the same instance that Libby was asking Pippin to clarify Shire- reckoning, Pippin asked, "Hold on to what? What am I supposed to hold on to?"  
  
Libby laughed. "Good one, Pip. It's just another way of saying 'wait a moment' or 'wait a minute,' you know?" It was slightly irksome that their differences in dialect was causing the confounded hobbits to explain her slang terms, but then again, she often had to do them the same discourtesy.  
  
Pippin was still utterly baffled, and feeling unaccountably foolish, decided against asking Libby to clarify more. Instead, he said, "Shire- reckoning is our dating system. Hey. are you okay, Frodo?"  
  
Frodo seemed to be muttering something inaudibly. Sam leaned close to hear his indistinguishable babble, then said, "He's asking for Libby to move closer to him." This Libby did, and she beckoned April to follow her. Pippin and Merry followed behind the hobbling Libby, whose pant legs were still rolled up above her legs.  
  
"April's- right. Those are- interesting colors," Frodo said, eyeing the bruises glaring back at him. One was a purplish-blue, on her left knee, and the other, on her right and his left, was yellow-green. "They didn't harm you, did they?" Frodo asked, anxiety dawning in his blue eyes.  
  
Libby shook her head of crimped blonde hair, which was now frizzing about her head from all the time she had raked her fingers through it in an attempt to comb it out. She now looked like a cross between a human and a lion cub forming its golden mane. "Naw, I just kinda got clumsy in a race and fell over the metal thingy I was jumping over."  
  
"You fell over a sword... wouldn't you be cut from that?" Frodo asked, slowly and deliberately. He thought that perhaps he could use Libby to distract himself. He assumed Libby was just adding an extra letter to the word "thing," perhaps her odd speech could be understood with time. Time. Time was a thing Frodo did not want to even think of right now. If his qualms were correct, time could be running might short for him indeed. The shadows seemed to be growing ever prominent, and he was looking at Libby through a sort of fog, although he could still discern colors even by the shaky firelight.  
  
Libby smiled at Frodo. "Not a sword. I don't think the track coach would exactly allow that! No, it was just a hurdle- a metal bar held up by metal poles- No, not the kind you're thinking about, April!" April had a slow smile forming on her face, doubtless from one of the myriad of inside jokes they shared. "Get your mind out of the gutter!" Remembering that the hobbits might ask what she meant by her expressions, she hastily added, "Don't ask, just more of our native slang terms." She rubbed the angry bruises in what she hoped was a surreptitious manner, not wanting to seem like she was making the mere bruises a mountain out of a molehill. Frodo, after all, had a stab wound in his left shoulder, and was lucky to be alive. She, however, couldn't explain the coldness in his body. "Frodo, do you need my sweatshirt?"  
  
Frodo shook his head, frowning at Libby, remembering that he girl had not been wearing long sleeves, and half of the skin on her arms was bare, along with her wearing very short pants. "No- I don't want you to be cold on my account."  
  
"But- you need it more than I do," Libby argued, starting to pull it over her head of blonde hair. April gently pulled her hands off. "He's right, it would do us all no good to have two sick members," April whispered.  
  
Suddenly, a dark figure appeared out of the shadows. "April's right, you know, Libby, it's very kind of you, but you're already thin and probably get cold easily. and I see you're hurt anyway yourself," he added, eying an odd swelling of her right shin that even Libby herself had not noticed, having not taken the liberty of comparing the size of her right shin and her left.  
  
Sam jumped up with surprise, standing protectively over Frodo, drawing his sword swiftly. Strider bent down at Sam's side and said something that Libby couldn't make out, and Sam seemed to relax as he sheathed his sword into its scabbard.  
  
"Not from them," Libby said quickly.  
  
"I didn't think so," Strider said honestly, "and I'm sure I was no help, earlier today, I am sorry." He still wasn't sure whether to completely trust the girls, but her intentions seemed kindly enough.  
  
"I don't get cold that easily and I'm not skinny!" Libby said, this time, removing her sweatshirt completely. Goosebumps immediately began popping up on her exposed arms from the sudden shock of cold air.  
  
"You see, you could catch cold," Strider said. "Is your ankle bothering you even the faintest bit? It looks rather bigger than your left?"  
  
"I don't need it!" Frodo insisted. Strider turned sadly to look at the injured hobbit. He probably did, yet he had a feeling no amount of covers could help him, as he suspected that the coldness was a product of the wound. "Libby, please put your shirt back on, though even that probably isn't nearly enough for you, I'm freezing and I have a lot of covers over me!" Libby sighed grimly and heeded Frodo's wishes, slipping the River City sweatshirt back over her head, messing up her hair further. April couldn't help but be slightly amused, knowing that Libby would have a few words to say if she came to see her reflection in the mirror.  
  
"I feel no pain," Libby said, biting her lip, reddening, and looking away, her usual mannerism when she wasn't being entirely truthful.  
  
"I somehow don't believe you- but I won't be able to help either one of you out much until later. Frodo, what happened?"  
  
Frodo repeated his account of the Black Riders, and it was nearly identical to the one from before. Once again, he didn't mention how he had become invisible. Strider's concern appeared to increase markedly after hearing Frodo's words, and he ordered the group to keep the fire going and Frodo warm. "But Libby, keep your shirt. The same goes for you and yours, April," he added, referring to April's black leather jacket, which she also had offered to Frodo. "You girls really are far from being dressed sufficiently, especially you, Libby. I'm used to heat and cold, but you're only, how old did you say, Libby? Sixteen? And a girl?"  
  
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think I can be just as tough dealing with temperatures as guys," Libby blustered belligerently, springing hyper-speed into her feministic point-of-view. "Good grief." Her blue eyes darkened somewhat, as she had taken umbrage at Aragorn's words.  
  
"Sorry, I mean a girl as in a child- even an age such as sixteen is young to me at my age," Strider said. "Sam, can we talk?" Libby watched as Sam and Strider talked in private. "Guard him well!" Strider ordered after his brief conversation with Sam Gamgee, and then he departed, leaving the group by themselves once again. After the back of the tall, lean Ranger had faded into the distance, the three younger hobbits and the teenaged girls settled back to keep vigil over their wounded companion. Frodo seemed to be fast sinking into a state of delirium, his complexion etiolating by the minute. At sporadic intervals, Frodo would scrunch up his face in pain or mutter nonsense. 


	4. Flight

Author's Notes: Inconsistencies may be rampant, so just bear with me, and point out any conflicting information in a review! I will greatly appreciate it. Also, would anybody like to volunteer to become a beta- reader for me?  
  
Disclaimer: Do I own anything? Naw, except maybe those not appearing in the books of the literature deity Tolkien. Oh, I know what I own... my three-in- one copy of Lord of the Rings !  
  
While Aragorn was away, Frodo slumbered in troubled dreams, despite the mounting pain in his wound and a deathly cold spreading from his maimed shoulder to his whole arm and left side. His friends, meanwhile, kept a tense vigil, attempting to warm him up with cloths of hot water, and to cleanse his slash. The minutes seemed to creep by about a tenth slower than was typical. Everyone seemed half-asleep, and even Libby, normally a person who could stay up past two in the morning without a problem, was falling into an exhausted torpor. April was obliged to nudge her friend awake with a sharp jab of the elbow on more than one occasion. As light began to creep into the small, secluded valley, Aragorn at last returned from his mysterious trip.  
  
"Behold the stroke of Frodo's sword, and the only hurt it did to his enemy!" the tall Man declared, lifting a black cloak with a minute slash near its hem. Libby felt disappointed. It was so unfair, that Frodo was gravely injured, while the Black Rider had escaped with only a tear in its garment! Not only that, but she had gotten worse tears from climbing trees in her youth, and gym class. "All blades perish that pierce this dreadful king, though, and more fatal to him was Elbereth the star-Maiden's name. In the meantime, more lethal to Frodo was this!"  
  
Aragorn stooped once more, lifting a long, slender knife, with a cold gleam in its metal blade. As the Ranger raised it for all six of his companions to set their eyes on, they observed that the edge was notched and the end-point broken off. As the growing light of dawn hit the metal, they gazed in surprise as the blade seemed to disintegrate as if smoke into the air, leaving only the hilt of the dagger in his hand. Libby's mouth fell open slightly as she gawked at the knife. A faint sense of premonition told her that Frodo's stab wound was more serious than she'd feared, if the disappearance of the blade alone was anything to judge by. "Alas, this execrable knife gave the wound, and few now have healing powers to match such malevolent weapons! But I will do what is in my ability to do. I fear this wound is beyond my skill to heal. Frodo needs Elvish remedies."  
  
As Libby attempted to remember what the pretentious word execrable meant, and figuring it was something negative, Strider sat on the grass, laid the hilt on his knees, and sang words in a language completely unfamiliar to Libby, April, and even the hobbits, natives of Middle-Earth. Then, dropping the handle on the turf, Strider turned to the wounded Frodo and muttered some words none of the others could perceive. He drew some long leaves out of pouch, and began telling of the virtues and chronicles of the plant, which he called athelas, while crushing one of the leaves, causing an aroma caustic in a wholesome sort of way. After the brief recap of the leaves, Strider threw he leaves into the boiling water and bathed Frodo's shoulder. Neither showed pain from the burning hot water, as Libby realized with surprise. The uninjured felt calmer from the refreshing fragrance of the steam. The herb also appeared to help Frodo somewhat, as his face no longer appeared contorted from the immense pain of the wound.  
  
"Libby, I'd better splash a little bit over your bruises," Strider said, glancing over at the tall teenaged blonde. Libby shook her head vehemently. There were two reasons she didn't want the water used on her: one was that it was hot; the other was that Frodo needed it.  
  
Not wanting to go into the high temperature of the water, lest she appear wimpy, Libby protested by saying, "Um.. Won't Frodo need this water?" She suddenly wondered how they would manage to carry the pot of sloshing water for the duration of the journey.  
  
"I brought plenty of spare leaves," Aragorn answered, patting the pouch on his belt. "Besides, you have just a mundane, everyday injury which would be instantly cured by this water, and that would make hiking a whole lot easier on you, for we will be doing a great deal of walking with much haste."  
  
"Ms. Libby, just let Mr. Strider bathe your legs, look how Mr. Frodo has actually been helped somewhat, despite the nature of how he was hurt," Sam added, uncharacteristically direct.  
  
"Er.. isn't the water hot?" Libby blurted out. She reddened slightly, realizing that this sounded like a very foolish question. It had been painful the time at sleep away camp when somebody had knocked into her arm on the lunch line, spilling her bowl of boiling hot soup onto her hand, but perhaps the athelas had a power to make hot water help without burning the person it touched. The memory of sleep away camp seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere, and disappeared as quickly as it had come.  
  
"You will not get burned, whatever past experiences and instincts you might have concerning hot water," Aragorn replied gently. Libby felt slightly embarrassed, feeling as if he'd somehow managed to read her thoughts. Finally obliging to Strider's wishes, Libby rolled up the legs of her capris again and moved next to the pot of hot water. As Aragorn splashed the water over the blonde's track-battered knee joints, the pain seemed to evaporate, and a healthy glow began showing through the mottled bruises. Contrary to how the soup had felt, this water felt pleasantly warm, as if it was from the type of shower Libby enjoyed most. A few splashes later, the damage had dissipated, and her whole knees were flesh- colored once more. Libby jumped up so suddenly when Strider moved backwards that the man started. What had hitherto been twitches of soreness caused merely by the process of standing up, sitting down, or changing position was now nonexistent. "Careful, Libby, there is no need to re-injure yourself by getting up."  
  
Libby snickered slightly, taking Strider's admonition for a joke. "Sorry, but it's nice to be able to sit and stand as fast or slow as I'd like," Libby stated, as she rejoined April and the others by the roaring fire.  
  
"And how are you feeling, Frodo?" Strider inquired. "Has the athelas helped you any?" He knew that the hobbit was without a doubt still undergoing excruciating pain, and he merely wished to know the effects the Morgul knife and the athelas treatment were having on the stalwart perian. "Can you use your hand, or stand, or anything of the nature?"  
  
Frodo sighed glumly, feeling as if he were now a burden, a nuisance to the group. The way he was feeling, he would be unable to carry anything or even walk. He attempted to rise, but found that he could not. The effort caused waves of severe pain. Would his companions have to take turns carrying him to Rivendell? He wondered about the effects of his wound in the long run: would he be unable to use his arm for the rest of his life? Would it be as if he had only one arm? How would they be able to finish their journey, if he was unable to walk? "I. I can't move my arm," Frodo said miserably, making another futile attempt. "I feel so dizzy.. so cold."  
  
Strider's trepidation increased markedly. This was a disastrous turn to things.. Frodo had to be brought to Rivendell as quickly as humanly possible without using the hazardous Road. Throwing another blanket on top of Frodo in an attempt to warm him up, and joined the others to discuss ideas concerning the journey and Frodo.  
  
"He can't walk by himself. He'll either have to ride Bill or be carried until our arrival at Rivendell. Our peril has worsened," Strider said, a dismal expression etched on his worn face.  
  
Putting the thought of what some girl named Liz Rivers would be likely to say if she heard the comment about riding Bill out of her head, almost smiling at the wistful memory, Libby asked, "Er.. Sorry.. but who is Bill?"  
  
"Bill is our pony, the one who has been bearing our luggage," Sam said, an expression of admiration on his face for some reason unknown to Libby. "I'm very fond of him." Well that explained his face.  
  
"Frodo's just going to have to ride the pony, then.. I guess." April said, biting her lip. Her brown eyes flickered over to Frodo and then searched the premises, evidently wondering where this Bill was.  
  
"He is at the bottom of the hill," Aragorn said. "Sam, would you be kind enough to fetch Bill for us?" Sam got to his bare feet and descended the hill.  
  
"Excuse my completely off-topic question, but how come none of the hobbits are wearing shoes?" Libby asked curiously.  
  
"That is just a custom of theirs, as odd combinations of words are a custom of yours," Strider said. "We have another problem: the luggage. How are we going to manage it? Libby and April appear to have their own, and then there's the baggage Bill has been bearing. Libby, April, if you don't mind me asking, me we see your luggage?"  
  
April and Libby went to look for their bags, trying to remember where they'd stowed them, as Strider, Merry, and Pippin continued talking, briefly wondering if their bookbags and Libby's pocketbook had even come to Middle-Earth with them. Their questions were immediately answered when they caught sight of Sam leading a thin, decrepit-looking pony up the hill. Sam was also carrying April's large, overstuffed, pine-green bookbag, Libby's fairly empty checkered tote bag, besides her math and Euro notebooks and gym uniform, stuffed with old homework papers; and Libby's denim pocketbook. Dropping the backpacks at their feet, Sam asked, "What do you girls have in here? This one, especially," he added, nudging April's bookbag. Libby bent down, enjoying the use of legs devoid of track injuries, and picked up the bookbags and her purse: April's bookbag caused her nearly to fall to one side. "Oh, my, April, what DO you have in this thing anyway? Exactly how much homework do your teachers give you?"  
  
April chuckled softly. "Didn't Strider say to open them when we get back to the group? Perhaps he wants us to carry stuff, and we certainly need to." The threesome proceeded to ascend the hill the rest of the way, rejoining the others. Libby dropped the bags. "Hold on. April, why am I still carrying this thing?" She feigned a glare at her empty-handed friend.  
  
"Because you're such a good friend.." April said, nudging Libby. "What are we supposed to do, again?"  
  
"We just want to know what's inside those bags," Strider said. "Go ahead, dump them out, there may be something which will wind up being of use in there." Shrugging, Libby unzipped her denim pocketbook and dumped the entirety of its contents on the ground, including the "secret compartment," which had been inadvertently left open by Libby.  
  
Spotting what had formerly been in the secret compartment lying on the ground, April let out an involuntary snort. Expecting ribbing about her untidiness, as she so often got from anyone who happened to see the mess of candy wrappers in her pocketbook, Libby rolled her eyes. However, April was not thinking about the messiness, although that was a topic she commonly teased her friend about. She was eyeing a couple of small square objects wrapped in plastic and about three cylindrical objects wrapped in paper with the word "Tampax" written on them. April poked Libby in the arm and nodded at the feminine products.  
  
As the hobbits and Aragorn were unfamiliar with maxi-pads and tampons, they found the reactions of the two friends rather confusing. First a fiery red flush of embarrassment came into Libby's fair-skinned cheeks, and then the tall blonde went into helpless convulsions of mortified laughter. Entirely befuddled, the others exchanged glances.  
  
Pippin wanted to be let in on whatever the joke between the two girls was. "What's so funny? Tell me, I want to know the joke!" Suddenly, he spotted the squares in pink plastic and the Tampax cylinders. He picked them up, and said, "What are these? What are they used for?"  
  
This was too much for Libby, being asked to explain the function of a tampon. Her gales of giggling increased, until she felt as if she'd "split her besides laughing" and doubled up. Tears of mirth were running down her cheeks. April was also cracking up, but she managed to choke out, "It's the secret of a woman, and trust me, you really don't want to know."  
  
"Oh, my. gosh. my friend. Liz. Liz. should really. be. here." Libby managed to choke out, tears now streaming down her face. Her whole face was reddened from laughing, and she was beginning to hyperventilate. "Oh my. I can't even. breathe now." Liz Rivers would have a field day hearing Libby being asked the use of a tampon, and the curiosity the packages were now drawing, as Libby thought with reflective amusement Liz seemed to be popping into her head on many occasions today.  
  
Frodo's blue eyes were curiously fixed on the cluster of his companions, a couple, namely April and Libby, although Merry and Pippin were also chortling, were consumed by gales of laughter. Frodo felt slightly left out, wishing he could be in on whatever the joke was. His pain was somewhat dormant, but it was still there; and he felt he could do with a distraction. What was the cause of the sudden laughter?  
  
Suddenly, Sam turned and spotted Frodo, looking alone and forlorn. Filled with pity for his master, he asked Strider if he could carry Frodo over to the cluster of friends. "He could do with a laugh, if he picks up on their joke," Sam said thoughtfully.  
  
"Well, laughter is sometimes called the best medicine, and although it certainly wouldn't heal a Morgul-blade's wound, it will distract Frodo from his fight and pain temporarily," Strider said in agreement, and he picked up the injured hobbit, who seemed feather-light to him, and carried him over to the group, setting him down by the pile of the contents of Libby's pocketbook.  
  
"What's going on? What's so amusing?" Frodo asked, looking hard at the still snickering Libby and the smiling April, then giving his two cousins Merry and Pippin confused looks.  
  
"There's something about those pink things and those white cylindrical objects that Libby isn't telling us!" Pippin declared, handing one of the pads and a tampon to Frodo.  
  
"Can we /please/ go through the rest of my stuff?" Libby asked, going beet red again, slight chortles still lingering even as she spoke.  
  
"Let's see," Aragorn said, "Empty papers, more papers, more papers. this appears to be a hair item, correct?" Libby nodded. "Another hair item, and what are these?" He held up a Chap Stick, eyelash curler, and a tube of mascara.  
  
"Libby! You're keeping miniature torture devices in there!" Pippin declared, bringing more laughs from April and Libby. He poked up at the eyelash curler, and taking it from Strider, he curiously pressed the handle again and again. "What does this do?"  
  
"It curls eyelashes," Libby said, picking up her mirror, showing it to Strider, and then, opening the mirror, lifted it up to her face. She gave a look of disgust at her stringy, greasy-looking hair, wishing she could have bathed or showered, then, taking the curler from Pippin, closed it shut over her eyelashes.  
  
"Ahh, that's gruesome!" Pippin declared, making a shocked face. Hobbits from Middle-Earth were not accustomed to watching anybody curl their eyelashes, nor had they ever so much as heard of an eyelash curler. The beauty contraption was an anachronism.  
  
Strider, meanwhile, opened up the mascara. "Another eyelash item, I presume?" Libby nodded. "How do you manage to put these right by your eyes without flinching? And Chap stick." he added, reading the label of the lip gloss, "What is this used for?"  
  
"In case my lips are dry," Libby said, discomfited about the highly girly turn the conversation was taking. "And this is my wallet. No money in there and I don't reckon my money is good in Middle-earth anyway. and that's my pocketbook. Oh, and pens and pencils. Hey, I didn't even know I had these! Here, Strider, take them, they're a kind of food, well, snack, more like."  
  
"Food? I want food!" Pippin said vehemently. "Is it mushrooms? Carrots? What is it?"  
  
"Chocolate, with peanuts on the inside," Libby said. It was a large package of peanut M&Ms that she and April had bought a couple of days before and forgotten. "Strider, we'll share, it's up to you when we eat, though. Just to warn you, this isn't exactly health food, though. All it does is make a person fat, although it tastes so good it can be addicting, especially if you're anything like April or me. And these are my reading glasses. useful for reading if you have poor-ish eyesight like me."  
  
"Hold on. what's this?" Frodo asked weakly, spotting a small, folded piece of paper that had blown right in front of him. He retrieved it with his functioning right hand, reading, "Do not throw out until you copied this" in a weak, barely audible whisper. He unfolded the paper with difficulty and read the two questions written within the lines, in Libby's small, untidy hand. "Does Kira Whys still play dirty and cheat in sports? Is Kira Whys still a conniving, lying little wench?"  
  
Libby blushed slightly and looked down, trying to remember who the Kira Whys featured in those inflammatory questions were. She clacked the rings on her two hands together slightly as she thought hard, frowning. Apparently, she loathed this Kira person, whoever she was.  
  
"Did you write that? You must not like that Kira Whys character very well," Merry commented, eying the fidgeting blonde.  
  
"Goodness, Lib, it's lucky Kira isn't here.. I don't believe I've ever met her.. Is she one of the bullying sort we've had trouble with?"  
The memory suddenly returned to the pale blonde in a flash. "You bet she is, and you're lucky not to know her! Can't take a loss, and she has major anger management issues.. I'd be screwed if she ever got hold of that, but ask me if I care anymore," Libby said sharply, a scowl etched on her face. "Heh, I nearly got into a fight with her just because I beat her at a game, if I'm remembering correctly."  
  
Merry shook her head, kind of figuring out the sort of person that Libby was referring to. "I really dislike that type," the small hobbit mused thoughtfully.  
  
As the sky becoming fully daylight, all the companions save Frodo hurriedly packed their supplies. Libby and April had, after getting permission from Strider, chucked any unneeded papers they had into the fire, though they kept their binders and textbooks. As Frodo was unable to walk, the group divided the bulk of the luggage amongst them, and set Frodo on Bill. After having a hurried breakfast, which did not yet include the M&Ms, to the displeasure of Pippin, they set out to continue their course to Rivendell. They headed in a southerly direction, because the area was wooded country and Strider said that Frodo ad to be kept warm, particularly at night, and that fire would protect them all if the Black riders returned. Also, he planned to use a shortcut by cutting across another great loop. Nobody worried about the "shortcut," because the hobbits by now believed that Strider's shortcuts really didn't go wrong, and April and Libby were used to trying them out themselves when wandering about River City, whether they went through woods or down a railroad trestle or through somebody's yard. The group slowly made their way around the southwestern slopes of the hill, and eventually to the edge of the road, which was devoid of the Black Riders. As they crossed, all heard a faraway cold voice calling and a second answering. Strider ordered them all to walk faster, and they crossed into a scant, gloomy land. Frodo's pain was growing again, and the others were getting sore from bearing their burdens. Their backs were bowed, and Libby was being pulled at an odd angle to the right because of the shoulder bag resting on her right shoulder. Even Strider, the most hardy of the lot, seemed exhausted. For five days, the scenery remained virtually unchanged, except Weathertop fading into the distance and the distant mountains ahead looming nearer. They were now making a course to the northeast, and time seemed to disappear from the monotony. The group spoke very little, too tired and breathless for conversation.  
  
Another couple of days passed, and the group at last arrived at a bridge called the Last Bridge. Sam and Strider explored the premises while the others took cover in a thicket, but they found nothing except a pale- green jewel, a beryl. They crossed the arched bridge uneventfully, and came upon a narrow ravine where the group turned aside, and they found themselves in a desolate country of dark trees and sullen hills. In almost total silence, the group cautiously picked their way through the barren, pathless country, littered by rocks and fallen trees everywhere. Frodo was almost reeling in pain, and it took him a great effort to conceal his agony. Bill kept accidentally trodding on rocks, jarring Frodo's wounded shoulder. He felt as if an invisible knife was twisting within him, growing ever deeper. The pain was spreading from his left side towards his midriff.  
  
"How much longer do we have to walk?" Merry complained, hungry and exhausted, and frustrated with the quiet. Frodo felt guilty, wishing that he wasn't such a burden on his friends. He knew his injury was the main factor of the grim silence, coupled with the exhaustion of his companions from struggling under massive burdens with scant rations for meals. Merry, Sam, and Pippin, like the hobbits they were, were very fond of feasting, and Libby struck him as being a surprisingly avid eater herself, contrary to what her slender frame suggested. Dusk was drawing, and the air, at least to Frodo, seemed to turn bitingly cold. The wind seemed to become vociferous, blowing dark clouds in from the West.  
  
"I believe it is going to rain, Mr. Strider," Sam said to Aragorn, eying the ominous-looking atmosphere. These words had barely passed his lips when the storm clouds opened, drenching the seven in a fine, drenching torrential downpour. By nightfall, they were all soaked to the skin and freezing, for they could not start a fire due to the saturated wood. Frodo felt as if he were in more pain than ever, his wound aggravated by the chilly water. The internal chill doubtlessly brought about by the noxious poison of the Morgul-knife was merciless, and the heap of blankets piled atop him seemed to be incapable of keeping out the cold of the external elements.  
  
The rain continued throughout the next day. Frodo was shivering ceaselessly, and wracked with pain from each tremble. He was tempted to slip away into the shadows beckoning him, yearned to escape this torture. All he had to do was put on the Ring and escape into the world of the wraiths forever. Yet something stronger seemed to prevent Frodo from giving up hope willingly. Perhaps it was a resilient resolve he'd never known himself to have, or maybe the support of his friends was stronger than they would ever comprehend. Whatever the unknown force was, it was helping him to sustain his life. He wondered if he would ever be able to properly show his gratitude to Strider for helping him prolong his hope, or Merry, Pippin, or Sam for being ever his dearest friends, or Libby and April, the unexpected addition to their party, for attempting to distract him from his torment by telling him stories, and wanting to give up their variations on cloaks to him. Frodo was wearing what Libby called a "gym shirt" over his tunic as an attempted extra source of warmth. The shirt, which was oversized, and even long, on Libby, fell past Frodo's knees so that the sleeves and hem had to be rolled back several times. Libby, meanwhile, had reluctantly put on her gym pants over her denim capris at Strider's insistence and Frodo's refusal to accept another extra source of warmth. The nylon pants, Frodo noted, were even larger on Libby than her sweatshirt. She had to tie several knots in the drawstring to keep them up, and the pant legs ballooned outward, causing Libby's lower half to appear to completely disappear. The only sign of Libby's pale legs was at one point near the hem of the pants where the fabric had been torn. With each increasingly vigorous quake from the chilly sensation, Frodo's pain seemed to mount ever higher. His breath began coming in rapid gasps, his complexion going pale and his eyes smarting.  
  
Sam was at his side in a flash, followed closely by Merry. Pippin was a few dozen feet up ahead walking with Strider, and April and Libby took up the rear of the bleak procession, muttering incessantly to each other. "Mr. Frodo, are you all right, well, as all right as can be expected, if you follow me?" Sam asked, reaching up and rubbing Frodo's icy left hand in a gesture of comfort. Merry, meanwhile, was patting Frodo's lower back, involuntarily causing more spurts of throbbing which made Frodo groan piteously.  
  
"I'm going to fetch Strider," Merry said. Before Frodo could faintly make his objection, Merry was already sprinting towards the front of the line, his bare feet slipping on the wet terrain.  
  
"I am all right, Sam, honest," Frodo said melancholically, embarrassed about displaying his suffering so manifestly, even as more surges of distress ravaged his slight frame. Sam sighed inwardly, with a mixture of compassion and frustration. Frodo Baggins had always possessed too much pride and stubbornness for his own well-being, and had the predisposition of concealing negative emotions. He resignedly continued rubbing Frodo's incapacitated left arm, hoping to somewhat warm him up with the friction of the massage.  
  
Strider came running back to Bill, Sam, and Frodo, with Merry following behind him. Aragorn gently lifted Frodo off of Bill, looking into his pale face. "Frodo, would you like another athelas treatment?" the tall man asked, gently laying the small body, convulsing with the torture from the poison of the dagger and the shadows Frodo had once mentioned, and moving aside his garments on the left side to have a look at the would. It was already closed, and merely appeared to be a cold, white mark on his left shoulder, yet something was continue to torment the valiant little fellow. Frodo nodded very slightly, and even that movement appeared to be causing him unspeakable agony. He called a halt, saying they would have to take a brief pause in their journey. He did not want to tarry for a prolonged period of time, as each passing minute caused more life to dwindle out of the ailing ring-bearer.  
  
Aragorn attempted to ignite a fire on soaked wood, but his efforts were once again in vain. He sighed dejectedly. How was he to boil athelas water or soup when he could not even manage to start a fire?  
  
April threw her bag down and rummaged through a hidden compartment on the inside lining of her backpack. "Don't ever tell the sadist admins at school I carry this around," she muttered to Libby before handing Aragorn the lighter. "This might be able to help, can I take a try?" When Strider gave his consent, April began rotating the little wheel of the lighter, causing the device to spark. She held it against the wood, but to no avail.  
  
"I have no other choice but to try another idea of mine. Does anybody have a sharp object on them?" April asked. "I want to make a small hole in the top of this."  
  
Aragorn drew his sword, and asked April where a good place to make a hole was. The petite girl pointed at the side of the lighter, near the top. Aragorn took it from her and managed to poke a miniscule hole through the side of the lighter. "Will a hole of that size suffice?"  
  
April nodded. Strider handed the lighter back to her and sheathed his sword. Plugging the hole with her finger after having shook several drops of lighter fluid onto the wood, April struck the lighter several times. It finally worked, April had managed to cause the beginnings of a fire, and Strider added small leaves to the minute flame, causing it to grow. When the fire was finally a manageable size, Aragorn began to boil some athelas water to bathe Frodo's shoulder. After the treatment was over, the company had a brief meal of soup before moving once again. The gasps had subsided, and Frodo relaxed slightly, showing that the athelas had helped slightly. Unfortunately, the treatment seemed to be growing more and more fruitless, to Aragorn's dismay. "We must hasten, rest will do us no good now."  
  
A long while after dark, Aragorn finally allowed his exhausted companions to halt again, saying they would rest until dawn on a stony shelf with a wall of rock behind it they had come upon. The bedrolls were set up by Merry and Pippin, and Sam dumped the majority of the pile of blankets, leaving only two for the others to share, by Strider's counsel. Libby and April shared one, and Sam, Merry, and Pippin crowded underneath the other. Saying he felt warm enough, Aragorn kept a vigil, watching for signs of peril. Smoking his pipe, Aragorn watched his resting companions and listened to the sounds of the night: wind, water dripping, a crack and the sound of falling rock. Frodo appeared to be restless; the wounded little hobbit was tossing and turning, his eyes flickering open on several occasions, staring unseeingly. At erratic intervals, the hobbit would mutter nonsense, often something along the lines of, "No! You shan't have it!" Strider listened to the peaceful snores of the other hobbits and April, and the quiet breathing of Libby. The taller girl kept rolling over in her sleep, appearing to accidentally kick her friend several times in her sleep. April stirred whenever her blonde friend kneed her, but then fell back into a heavy sleep. Strider's heart grieved for the afflicted Frodo, stricken down by an unknown malady, unable to sleep restfully, and wondered what tomorrow would bring.  
  
Author's note: Okay, see that drop-down menu thingy? Click on the first entry in the list, the one with the word review in it, and fill in the empty form that pops up. Congratulations, you have just reviewed my story and earned my thanks! Chapter 5 will be up soon 


	5. Uncertainty

Author's note: Mae govannen, mellyn, this is Tricia again! And how are you all doing? Eh.. I have revised this chapter, yadda yadda yadda. if you want to get updates on when I post actual updates, then read my livejournal (www.livejournal.com/~oooootricia00 ).  
  
Disclaimer: I /wish/ I could say I own Lord of the Rings, but. that would be a lie. I am not that lucky. Never have been, never will be.  
  
The next morning dawned with the cessation of the hammering cloudburst. The sky still was overcast with thick gray clouds, but they were breaking apart to reveal strips of blue. The wind was also shifting, growing less turbulent and blowing the clouds away from them. Instead of taking an early start, Strider went off by himself telling his companions to linger concealed under the shelter of the cliff, until he returned. He was planning on attempting to ascend the cliff and survey the land. Frodo felt better than the night before, less chilly on the outside; the termination of the rainfall had done that much good. The others were also thankful, as the rain, or ending of the storm, was one less nuisance to contend with. Merry and Pippin took to reminiscing pranks they had pulled on others during their childhood in the Shire.  
  
"Hey, Frodo, remember that time you, Pip, and I managed to sneak into the back of the Green Dragon and filch a whole barrel of ale, and replace it with water from the Brandywine and return it to the pub? How shocked the owner was to open the barrel and discover regular muddy water! He never did catch us, either. What great fun that was!"  
  
Frodo couldn't help but laugh, although that action caused a brief slash of pain to rout through his left side. He attempted to mask his anguish, not wishing to alarm his friends when their spirits seemed to have risen slightly. "Hey, Libby, April," he choked out wearily. "Did either one of you, or both of you, ever pull any good jokes?"  
  
April noticed the strained tone in the sickly hobbit's voice, but decided against speaking of it unless Frodo' condition seemed to worsen. All the same, she fervently prayed that Frodo would not be taken by another fit while Strider was away. Straining her mind to remember something, anything, she slowly said, "Libby. weren't you considered a holy terror by one of your teachers? What was it? Fourth grade or fifth? It was when our friendship was new."  
  
A slow smile crept across the face of Libby Artlong and she let out what sounded like a cackle. Merry and Pippin turned towards the younger, yet much taller, girl, impish grins crossing their faces. Libby shook her head, trying to remember exactly what stunts she'd pulled to disrupt class while Merry and Pippin coaxed her to tell her stories. What was April speaking of? Suddenly, she remembered a date. April first, 1997, April Fool's Day, and also April's tenth birthday. She remembered that April had been named for the month she had been born in, April. It was terribly confusing to some people.  
  
"There was the cat prank." Libby recollected, chuckling at the memory of how she, Chelsey Stanley, her friend Tyanne Jailey, along with others she'd drifted apart, had cooked up a plot to pull a blitzkrieg of practical jokes commencing from the moment their elderly teacher first left the room to talk to the educator next door. Mr. B. had possessed a habit of constantly leaving the classroom to socialize with the neighboring teachers. Sure enough, Mr. Eviles next door pulled Mr. B. out into the hallway, and then the entertainment had begun. Memory after memory of that day was bombarding Libby as rapidly as a barrage from a machine gun. "Well, on this special day people in the nation April and I live have a date designated specifically for playing hoaxes on each other, specifically for younger kids, as older inhabitants typically don't bother with cranks. Well, I was eleven then, and my friends and I had plans all mapped out for that day.  
  
"You have a holiday for jokes?" Pippin asked, a tone of envy in his voice. Shire inhabitants not only did not have a holiday for tricks, but Pippin, Merry, and a younger Frodo had often gotten into trouble for their high jinks. He missed those days, so free of strife and worry. Back then, Pippin would never have dreamed that he would be wandering in the wilderness, hastening to get an extremely ill cousin Frodo to safety in Rivendell, a land he only knew about from songs and stories from the mouth of Bilbo Baggins, notorious for his escapades.  
  
"We certainly do, and it used to be my favorite holiday, when I was a raucous, obnoxious little child," Libby replied, smiling fondly at the memories of the gangling, loquacious eleven-year-old version of herself. That gregarious girl within Libby was often concealed now in classes, save those in which she had a good friend to converse with. Libby recalled that one class was a fine example of when the "old" Libby was emphasized, because she often chatted with Josie Callahan in the corridor until she was scolded by her teacher, and then further drove him to the brink of insanity via gabbling with her buddy Olivia Gybczynski either through whispers or what she sardonically referred to as her "math notes."  
  
"Tell us what you did," Merry wheedled, his eyes sparkling. Merry, too, was a prankster at heart, and he dotingly remembered the days in which Pippin, Frodo, and he had been quite the triple act, terrorizing the Shire with their shenanigans, landing themselves in scrape after scrape. Like Frodo and Pippin, he yearned for the days of their innocent tomfoolery that the typical inhabitant of the Shire frowned upon.  
  
"Well, it was really funny, though now I can think of a better prank than that," Libby mused, idly raking a hand through her tangled blonde hair. Now that it had dried from the rain, it was curling and frizzing in many different directions, chewing her lower lip slightly as she endeavored to evoke the memories of her childhood, frivolous in spite of personal trials. "I had this little battery-operated device."  
  
"I beg your pardon, but what's a battery?" Frodo asked curiously, fatigue in his tone of voice. He was gray-faced from the relentless torture from the combination of the dark powers and the poison of the Morgul- knife, but his eyes had a renewed sparkle of inquisitiveness. As he tried to figure out exactly what a "battery-operated device" was.  
  
"I could show you one, if you'd like, I always have spares in my bookbag," April put in. She had intended to throw the spare batteries into the fire the day Strider had searched their belongings and advised them to chuck unneeded items, but she had also remembered that batteries doubled as explosives when thrown onto a fire.  
  
"Maybe a little later," Frodo said, sounding weaker from using some of his dwindling energy to speak. His discomfort was mounting markedly, but his did not wish to put a gloomy cloud over the cheery moment of cautious socializing. "Please continue, Libby, I want to know what you did to your teacher.  
  
"Well, the battery-operated device I had meows like a cat whenever it is moved, it has some sort of motion-sensor or whatever built in. Anyway, when my teacher left the room, one of my friends hid his p.. some communication paraphernalia." Libby had almost mentioned phones, and that would certainly would have incited more bewildered inquiries from the hobbits. This appeared to be a primitive sort of culture, lacking even the earliest of mechanical or electrical contraptions. "And then I tied the meower thingy to a lower beam concealed underneath his chair so he couldn't simply look down and see it."  
  
"Was he fooled?" Sam asked, who had up to this instant remained silent, keeping to himself save the fleeting, anxious glances he frequently sent in Frodo's direction. Despite his apprehension, he was slightly curious about how Libby's tale would turn.  
  
"Yeah." Libby said, a gradual beam slowly arching her lips upward. "He was. He pulled his chair out, and the thing meowed. He moved it again, and again he meowed. He was like, 'What the?! Is there a cat in here?! My whole class was cracking up."  
  
"Then what did he say? Or what did you say, should I ask?" Merry asked, chuckling after hearing what Libby's old teacher had exclaimed upon hearing the sudden noise of what seemed to be a cat.  
  
"I was like, I think it's under your chair! And he looked, saw the noisemaker tied to the beam with yarn, and poked it, making it meow again. I was like, April Fools! We were all laughing our rear ends off." Libby said, vividly seeing the class beside themselves with mirth, chaos reigning. before the reminiscence seemed to fade away. For a fleeting instant, she saw a skinny blonde girl of about eleven cutting the bonds attaching the noisemaker to the old teacher's chair, Chelsey Stanley, who was back then very short for her age and rather on the chubby side unsuccessfully trying to stifle guffaws, the even then extremely tall Tyanne howling with laughter and clapping her lanky friend on the back, Debra Van-Cavan giggling to herself, and Donnah Bartok burying her head so far under the protective cover of her arms that only her black curly ponytail was visible. Other tables were applauding and making wisecracks, and Mr. B. was giving Libby the thumbs-up sign.  
  
"So he thought it was a real cat. that's amusing," Pippin said, chortling. Libby no longer knew what Pippin was talking about, but she presumed that she had just told a humorous tale.  
  
Even Frodo was chuckling, but it was beginning to cause him to feel great pain. The entities controlling his body and his sensations, realizing that the young hobbit was leaning in the direction of a good mood, caused tirades of chilly agony that suddenly sent the small hobbit doubling over here he sat on the ground, heaving, eyes smarting, in yet another brutal stab at compelling the hobbit to submission. Tidal waves of nausea wracked the ring-bearer's maimed body, giving him a sensation as if he had literally split his sides from laughter. Swaying where he sat, Frodo fell back to the ground with a moan of pain, tears forming in his blue eyes. He blinked rapidly as he felt the warning within his eyes to hold the water where it belonged- in his tear ducts.  
  
The mood of the group plummeted like a stone as Sam, Merry, Pippin, Libby, and April all gathered around the ailing Halfling. Sam sat by his master's side slowly laying Frodo's head in his lap.  
  
"Master, oh, my dear master, should one of us attempt to fetch Strider?" Sam said hysterically, his voice sounding tearful. Frodo was trembling like a leaf from the cold that seemed to be spreading throughout the whole of his diminutive body. Merry was gingerly stroking Frodo's injured arm, laboring to bring some warmth back into his cousin's system. Lying prone on the ground, the faces of those leaning over him looked blurry, and darkness was gathering at the edges of his vision.  
  
"There will be no need, Master Samwise," a voice said from behind them. Strider had returned, and he bent over the tiny form of Frodo, his face haggard as he listened to Frodo's angst-ridden breath. He laid a large hand on Frodo's stricken figure, and winced at the chilly numbness of his battered body. Taking the hobbit in his arms, Strider carried Frodo over to the fire as the others followed behind. While cleansing Frodo's wounded shoulder with the anodyne liquid of water and athelas leaves, Strider broke the ill news to everyone: that they had come too far to the north and needed to locate a reasonably safe path back towards the south and the Ford of Bruinen. Upon hearing these ill tidings, the others exchanged apprehensive glances. That was nothing to how Strider felt; this error in his sense of direction could cost them all, Frodo in particular, perhaps even the whole of Middle-earth, dearly.  
  
After Frodo's pain alleviated somewhat, the group began to advance in a southern direction, scrambling over the unpleasant rocky terrain. Frodo's shoulder was jarred again and again as Bill repeatedly stepped on pebbles. Although the rocks unfortunately caused Frodo twinges of pain, it was impossible for the pony to avoid the cobbles, let alone the extremely numerous smaller pebbles. Later on in the day, the group came upon a ridge barring their passage, and were faced with the choice of turning back or attempting the climb.  
  
After making the decision to try to clamber over the mountain, they found it very grueling. Within half an hour, Frodo was obliged to dismount and struggle along the route on foot, though the others felt culpable about the unduly pain this would wreak upon the poor Ring-bearer. At the best of times, Frodo, like most hobbits, wasn't much of a climber, but in his enfeebled condition it proved almost impossible, and his knees felt as if they would give out as he climbed the steep incline. The others were also being tripped up by the rocks and sharp slopes, and Sam was nearly sent toppling back down the sharp slant when he accidentally wedged his foot underneath a rather large cobblestone. When, to the relief of all, they reached the summit, the night was nearly gone. The exhausted Frodo was suddenly walloped by another bout of extreme pain, and he threw himself down and lay on the ground shuddering, feeling as if icy claws were digging into his debilitated body. Shadows were obscuring his vision, making it virtually impossible for the impaired ring-bearer to see the trees, rocks, and his friends about him. He felt as if a menacing voice from an unseen creature was hissing at him from the shadows, beckoning him to the surrounding darkness. When the hobbit struggled to defy the fell voice, immense pain took the hobbit in its icy claws, endeavoring to torture the already frail perian into acquiescence with their will. It would not be long before the dwindling willpower of Frodo Baggins would wholly collapse, resulting in a tenth Ringwraith. The color was draining from Frodo's face as he lay there trembling unabatedly on the rocky soil, leaving him nigh on rivaling a ghost in pallor, tears of pain cascading down his cheeks and feeling as if they were having an acidic effect on his skin. Aside from the pain that the unknown sliver of Morgul-blade was causing as it cut its way deeper into the Ring-bearer in a course to his heart, its poison was making the Ring-bearer acutely sensitive to other sources of discomfort.  
  
Fretfully taking note of his elder cousin's speedily depreciating condition, Merry spoke to Aragorn, who also appeared to be dreadfully scared for the hobbit's life. Frodo had been one of his best friends for almost as far back as Merry could recall, and now there was grave peril against the older hobbit's existence. If Frodo gave up hope, he would be worse than dead. Frodo would be lifeless like the wraiths, yet undead. He would be a wrecked spirit, a fallen angel. "We cannot go any further, I fear this has been too much Frodo. I am dreadfully worried about him, Strider. What are we going to do? Will they be able to cure him if we ever make it to Rivendell?" Merry's brown eyes were fixed on the tall, lean Ranger as he expectantly awaited an answer.  
  
Aragorn sighed, wishing that he could tell the young hobbit what he desired to hear. However, he simply could not lie to the small, innocent creature, giving him false hope concerning Frodo's endurance. He wanted to say that Frodo would live and recover wonderfully, yet death was extremely probable if not certain. As he gloomily eyed the form of Frodo, he could not help but feel as if Frodo's life span was reaching its termination, remaining only by a minute, fraying thread. Struggling to fight back sudden tears threatening to start in his gray eyes, Aragorn dismally answered, "We shall see, only time will tell. There is nothing more I can do for him in the wilderness, and the mannerism of his wound is beyond my healing skills. Frodo needs Elvish medicine, if even that will assist him, and his injury is the chief cause of my being so anxious to press on. But I agree that we can go further tonight, as you all look weary, and it would do us no good if anybody else fell ill, from lack of sleep." It was obvious that something affected Aragorn badly if he was on the verge of crying, for he was not one to willingly shed tears.  
  
That night was cold up on the highly elevated ridge on which they were taking their slumber. The group sat huddled together round the small fire that Aragorn had ignited, shivering from the chilly wind. Aragorn said that he would stay awake for the entirety of the night in case Frodo needed him, which was a very elevated probability, and that Sam, Pippin, and April would each have a shift of sentry-duty. Frodo was lying there in a stupor, groaning out loud every now and then in his sleep.  
  
When Aragorn and Sam were on watch together, Frodo's whimpers grew higher in their volume and punctuated by gasps for breath, as if the wound were interfering with his ability to breathe. Aragorn quickly crushed some more athelas and bathed the delirious ring-bearer's shoulder, leaving Sam to man the post temporarily, and then rocked the shivering bundle of hobbit. When Strider returned to Sam's side, Sam seemed to jerk out of a semi-dream.  
  
"I'm sorry. Mr. Strider," Sam said apologetically, punctuating the "sorry" with a stifled yawn. "I almost nodded off there."  
  
Aragorn laid a hand on Sam's arm. "I forgive you, I can understand that you are weary. Today has been a callous day indeed. Just remember to stay on the alert, and don't let your drowsiness get your guard down." He lit his pipe and took a couple of slow breaths of the pipe-weed, his gray eyes looking over Merry, Pippin, Libby, and April. They at least were sleeping soundly, showing no unusual habits: Libby's tossing and turning was a nightly occurrence and therefore was probably normal for her. Merry and Pippin were snoring lightly, while April lay perfectly still.  
  
"Mr. Strider, what is the matter with my master?" Sam asked in a low voice after a couple of minutes of silence. His dark eyes were fixed in an appealing sort of manner on Aragorn's worn face. "His wound was small and it is already closed. There is no scar to be seen but a cold white mark on his shoulder."  
  
"Sam, you know what is occurring, what is certain to come to pass if we are too late. The shadows and poison have been torturing Frodo, beating him into compliance. His will is fading, and the Enemy knows that if he is kept in enough pain, he will no longer want to live. The shadows and the poison of the Morgul-knife are combining to strive for one sole objective: to finally overwhelm Frodo. He is one small, mortal creature and a fading will against Sauron , the undead Nine, and the general forces of evil."  
  
Sam's face was haggard as he absorbed Aragorn's words, horrified at the prospect of his master and dear friend becoming worse than deceased. He was filled with total compassion for Frodo, wishing that it was he instead of his kind master bearing this tribulation. "Is there no hope then?" Sam asked, his voice cracking with tears.  
  
"Frodo has been pierced by the weapons of the Enemy," said Aragorn, "and the poison and evil at work surpass my skill to drive out. But do not abandon hope, Samwise, for there is still the possibility that Frodo may survive." Aragorn fervently hoped that he was right even as he spoke, no longer certain about anything. He felt as if he had failed the hobbits; he had promised to protect them on their journey to Rivendell, had sworn to protect them from danger, saying that they would never make it on their own, and now felt colossal guilt, knowing that one could possibly succumb to the will of Sauron and pass away due to his negligence. He knew he had helped the hobbits to cope with the calamity, had known how to fight off the five Nazgul and gotten them much further than they would ever have advanced on their own, but would it suffice to the extent of bringing Frodo to Rivendell, Elrond, and his sole chance for life? Sighing to himself, Aragorn went to pour a glass of water for Frodo. The poor hobbit was rapidly losing all vestiges of an appetite, and the mere task of drinking water to keep himself hydrated seemed to deplete his low reservoir of energy. At one time, Frodo, half-delirious, had said something about the water tasting like sandpaper, and being hard to swallow.  
  
Author's Note: There's still something you have to do... review! Do you like this story? Review. Hate it? Review. Want to burn me to a crisp with your flames? Review! Want to appoint me supreme ruler of the universe? Review. Want me to go to hell? You know what to do... review! Is this story good? Bad? Ugly? Do I deserve an international prize for writing, or do I suck so badly that I should quit while I'm ahead.. er, behind? Tell me! A review would be the perfect way, though an e-mail could help too: send mail to all4truth@excite.com . ^.^ 


	6. Trollshaws plus help equals what?

oOoOo~*~THIS CHAPTER HAS NOT BEEN EDITED~*~oOoOo  
  
Author's Note: And here's chapter 6! Later chapters temporarily may not come as frequently due to moving to a new house. Chizzy, you'll have to man the post for me at Hogwarts 2020-2021 while I'm moving, packing and unpacking, along with Internet-deprived, and Mel, can you do me a very huge favor and clear any spam or yahoo-groups messages out of my inbox? And Malting and Lissi, if you guys decide to be moderators, you'll get to act as full-fledged admins at the Shire's boarding school, Millborough Hall, while I'm out of commission as an admin! ~^.^~ Yeah, yeah, now that I'm done advertising the RPGs I'll be neglecting from an unknown date to another unknown date, I'm going to take this opportunity to reply to reviewers!  
  
WeasleyTwinsLover1112: Yeah, just for a spoiler, it /is/ Glorfindel who is coming, I am remaining true to the books. Aargh... all the movies cut Glorfindel out, in the cartoon it was Legolas instead of Glorfindel. Grr...  
  
Obelia Medusa: You mean you wrote a longer review than usual? Congrats! ~^_^~ Just to let you know, I am currently cooking up a fic concerning a creature created by Sauron who turns on his master. A seed of an idea caused by my friend Jordanna, now I just have to get rid of the writer's block and think up a story to fit it. *makes a face* Writer's block.. the curse of authoring stories.  
  
TrueFan: Whoa, you've really outdone yourself this time! I printed out my entire reviews page.. And you took up one and a third printed pages with that latest review of yours. Congrats, you shattered your own record! By the way, you're a pretty good RPer for a newbie.. You sure Hogwarts 2020- 2021 is your first one? Or are you really good at picking up what the admins want by posts from the admins?  
  
Whoever reviewed "Chapter 6" when it mis-uploaded and only showed the Author's Note *glares at fanfiction.net for making her have to delete a chapter along with the review as so not to risk getting an Infraction Alert*: Thanks for the review! Here's the real installment of Chapter 6.. and seven is already in progress, consisting of the elf's coming to the battle at the Ford of Bruinen  
  
Disclaimer: Meh.. Disclaimers are evil. All standard terms of disclaimers apply to this, as I am not in any way associated with Tolkien besides reading his wonderful books. Not a family member or anything. By the way, speaking of family members of authors, the father of my friend James, Marc Vunkannon, has just published a fantasy! It's called Unbinding the Stone. Expect me to start advertising it when I find out what bookstores it is going to end up in. Hey, what are friends for, right James?  
  
The next day came bright and fair, but with naught but pale light in the rain washed sky. All felt buoyant save Frodo, who hadn't gotten any real rest, just onerous nightmares about endless winged creatures bearing his feared pursuers were flying about seeking him. As soon as it was wholly daylight, Strider went to assess the country, taking Merry with him. Meanwhile, April was trying to rouse Libby, who kept rolling over and mumbling nonsense each time April shook her shoulder or prodded her. Pippin was watching with glee, while Sam was attempting to comfort Frodo, who seemed to be suffering from mounting agony from his Nazgul-inflicted wound.  
  
Pippin couldn't help but smile roguishly to himself as he watched April's futile attempts to fully arouse her stubborn friend. For some reason unknown, Libby was simply refusing to get up, or perhaps she had finally slept contentedly. What Pippin did not know was that though Libby was normally such a heavy sleeper that she could compared to a rock, she required being comfortable with her sleeping-quarters to sleep soundly. When April pulled Libby's hood off her face, the tall blonde merely swatted her hand before resting her head on her arm. A sudden, devious idea came into Pippin's curly haired head. He motioned for April to duck her head so he could whisper his idea into April's ear.  
  
"I think we should dump water on her, that always works. I'm willing to do that in case Libby does anything in retaliation," Pippin hissed into the Asian girl's ear. April smirked and nodded her assent. Pippin smiled more widely, pleased that she was going along with his plot, Pippin felt like reviving the good old days of frivolities. Pippin dipped a cup into the water, which was only lukewarm at the moment, and walked over to the side of the half-asleep blonde. Frodo said something to Sam, who turned around. Pippin was pleased with himself; Frodo had evidently deduced what he was about to do. When April mouthed the signal, Pippin dumped the contents of the cup onto the girl's head.  
  
Libby awoke with a start, giving a earsplitting, high-pitched shriek as something wet and thick suddenly hit the side of her face. Her blue-gray eyes snapped open and, catching sight of April and Pippin beside themselves with mirth, felt a rush of annoyance and amusement simultaneously. She shot up from her bedroll and bopped April up side the head with her hand.  
  
"Ow!" April said, rubbing the side of her head, still chortling. At the same time, Pippin managed to snigger, "I think she's awake now!"  
  
"My God, you two, you're really.." As Libby was about to finish her sentence, Strider came sprinting onto the ridge with Merry. Both had their swords drawn and looked tense. Both had heard Libby's cry, and had feared an ensuing struggle.  
  
Aragorn felt infuriated once he realized that nothing had gone wrong and the scream he and Merry had heard had merely been the product of childish antics. After Pippin and April confessed to have given Libby a rude awakening and Libby admitted that she'd been the source of the cry, Strider angrily reprimanded them, reminding them of the grave peril all, especially Frodo, were still in. "This is neither the place, nor the time, for your irrational high jinks! If the Black Riders had been nearby, they would doubtless have been alerted to our presence by Libby's shriek! Have you forgotten our plight?" he said curtly.  
  
Libby, April, and Pippin all exchanged awkward glances with one another, frightened by Aragorn's fury. At the same tie, all three felt guilty about having risked their lives for idiotic merriment, especially since the injured Frodo was unable to anything and at the same time be devoid of severe agony. Tiny little Pippin shuddered at the thought that he could have alerted Black Riders to their presence, however far off they might have been. Meanwhile, Libby was thinking, I am such an ignoramus sometimes.  
  
"Which way are we going, Mr. Strider?" Sam asked timidly, in a combined attempt to change the subject and to alleviate the tension, which appeared to be upsetting Frodo. The chubby hobbit fixed a blue-eyed gaze on the man, waiting for a response.  
  
Aragorn had been immensely relieved when Merry and he had gone to survey the country. According to his skills when it came to sensing direction, they were now on a more proper road. The Ranger had spotted the Loudwater from the summit at which he and Merry had checked out the area, and although the Road wasn't in his line of vision, the Man now knew that the Road was very nearby. He had finally resolved that hazardous though the Road undoubtedly was, it was the quickest way to the Ford. More and more life was dwindling out of the battered Ring-bearer, and if they tarried for much longer, vainly searching for a passageway in the thick hills, Frodo cease to exist and become exactly like the vile creature which had inflicted the deadly wound upon him. The athelas only somewhat assuaged the pain the hobbit was suffering by day and by night, and it was growing less and less effective as the dark powers of the wound more and more efficiently fought the virtues of the herb.  
  
"We must make for the Road, as it is hopeless to find a path through these hills. Whatever danger may be set upon it, the Road is the only way to the Ford of Bruinen. Speed is our only ally in our plight," Aragorn said. "We are heading in the proper direction now, we are no longer lost in the Wild."  
  
The others were infinitely reassured by Aragorn's news. The road was easier to move along than these ludicrously impassable hills, and they would be able to move more quickly due to the subtracted burden of having to meticulously verify the way they were headed every half-hour or so. Now that the group of companions knew the route in which they were headed for certain, they had earned some essential time. Would it be enough, though, or was it already too late for Frodo? This disheartening reflection was in the minds of all, even Aragorn.  
  
After a quick meal of porridge, the group began to progress again. Frodo was glad that he was heading downwards now, as it wasted a considerably smaller amount of energy than ascending the ill had done. To add to his respite, the slope of the hill was growing very gentle! However, pain was assailing him again, and a mist kept clouding over his eyes, shrouding his eyesight. On one instance, Merry, who was walking in front of him, suddenly seemed to double, and Frodo slowly passed his hands over his eyes, although that small action caused the pain in his left side to mount.  
  
Before long, the land was travelable enough for Frodo to ride Bill again, and Aragorn gently lifted the eldest and tallest of the four hobbits onto the pony, once again dividing up the luggage amongst himself, the younger three hobbits, and the teenaged girls. The only worry at the moment was the packs seemed considerably lighter than when they had set out from Weathertop, as April suddenly observed with dismay and pointed out to Strider. Their provisions were dwindling rapidly.  
  
"I'm afraid there is nothing we can really do, besides take that as yet another incentive to hasten," Aragorn said gently to the worried teenager, patting the Asian-American on the shoulder. "We will merely have to ration our equipment the best we can, April." Aragorn felt his heart sinking slightly, and he fervently hoped that their goods would last until Rivendell. He had not expected to take up with two extra companions en route to his childhood home. April and Libby did seem somewhat useful though, at least as comic relief for the two youngest hobbits. He also sensed that perhaps April and Libby were somewhat wiser for their ages than he'd originally thought, though they were downright incautious to the point of reprimanding from him at times.  
  
April accepted Aragorn's words with a small nod, readjusting the weight of her bookbag on her aching shoulders. Her muscles had been sore for the past days, although the discomfort was now alleviating as she grew used to bearing a burden. All the same, she was worried about the food running low. The small fifteen-year-old (or was she now sixteen? As soon as nineteen days from October sixth passed, she would have been alive sixteen years. Apparently in this place, her birthday was October 25th, while Libby's birthday would be exactly sixth months later, or April 6th) tucked a few stray strands of black hair behind her left ear, and watched the smallest hobbit, Pippin, drawing further and further ahead of the others.  
  
Suddenly, the youngest hobbit stopped short, drew in his breath with joy, and turned around. He had spotted the beginnings of a path, littered with stones and fallen trees at some points. "There is a path here!" Pippin shouted excitedly, pleased with himself. He stood rooted to the spot, waiting for the others to catch up to him.  
  
Libby took off at a sprint, eager to see what Pippin was indicating. April was following close behind her friend, while Sam, Merry, and Aragorn remained walking, Aragorn leading Bill, who was bearing the injured Frodo, along. Frodo looked up from his perch on the pony's back, his blue eyes seeming to come back into focus.  
  
"What is it. AARGH!" The strap of Libby's handbag ripped, and the denim bag, with its contents of food, fell to the ground with a thud. "Of all the pains in the ass.." She shoved the spilled containers, which thankfully had not burst, back into the bag and began running again. April stooped to pick up one her older friend had accidentally left behind.  
  
When the others had reached the smallest of the company, who was pointing, they saw that the tweenaged hobbit was indeed correct: the unmistakable beginnings of a path, offering an easy way downwards.  
  
"Sorry Aragorn.. I didn't notice my bag was beginning to rip," Libby mumbled shamefacedly, chewing on her lip.  
  
"No harm was done, you're forgiven," Aragorn answered. He just hoped that the girl would be able to carry her bag now that the strap was useless. By the looks of it, Libby would have to clasp it against her body with both arms for the remainder of the journey, or until they had somehow mended the strap.  
  
The group cautiously followed the footpath, growing apprehensive as it led into a dark wooded area. Suddenly, they came upon an enormous door, almost twice the height of Libby and even Aragorn, and it was ajar upon one hinge. The company halted, realizing that there was some sort of chamber within, but because of the darkness of the forest, nothing could be seen from outside. Sam, Aragorn, and Merry managed to heave the door open a little wider, using all of their physical strength, and Aragorn and Merry squeezed inside, leaving the other five waiting.  
  
Pippin shifted his weight uneasily, trying to figure out what creature would inhabit a hole with such a gargantuan entrance. Suddenly, an idea hit him, causing him to give an involuntary quiver of fear. His hazel eyes darted around, half-expecting to spot an infuriated troll advancing upon him, and then he called, "If there was ever a troll-hole, this is it! Come on out, and let us get away/ Now we know what made this path, and we ought to get off it quick!" The youngest of the hobbits worriedly looked up and down the path again, and then around at the companions waiting outside with him. Frodo sat unmoved, but Sam, April, and Libby all looked alarmed.  
  
Aragorn squeezed back out through the crack, followed by Merry. He was adamant despite the hobbit's concerns, knowing from his brief observation that trolls were not an impending doom at the moment. "There is no need, I think. A troll-hole this unquestionably is, but it seems long abandoned. Let us maintain our course guardedly, and we shall see."  
  
The seven companions went on, continuing along the path, which was now plunging down to an even thicker wooded area. Pippin was still afraid, but didn't wish to own up to his cowardice, and went on ahead with Merry. Libby and April were about thirty or forty feet behind them, and Sam, Aragorn, and Bill carrying Frodo took up the rear.  
  
"Mer, exactly what was inside that.. Oh, no." Pippin blanched as his hazel eyes caught sight of three vast black shapes dwarfing himself and Merry at least three or four times, not too far ahead through the thick tree trunks. He wiped his sweaty hands against his trousers, and asked, with a cracking tone, "Do you see what I think I see?"  
  
Merry's brown eyes looked in the direction Pippin was specifying, and he too felt a thrill of absolute dread. "Run! We've got to warn Strider and the others!" the older hobbit squeaked.  
  
Pippin didn't need telling twice. He immediately did an about-face and went sprinting back towards Strider, Merry following close behind. As they passed Libby and April, he heard Merry gasp, "Follow us!" and then the feet of the two girls thudding along behind them with a racket typical of the Big People.  
  
"There are trolls," Pippin panted, clutching at a stitch in his side. "Down in a clearing not far below, we saw them through the tree trunks! They're huge! I knew there were trolls here!"  
  
Aragorn picked up a stick, inwardly amused. All the same, he was glad that Peregrin had some sense of danger, small though it was. This time, he knew that Pippin was mistaken, but the young hobbit was being unusually wary today. "We will come and look at them. The Ranger strode forward, after noting that Frodo was the only one who hadn't shown any sign of fright. Aragorn didn't know what to make of this. Did Frodo remember that one simple fact about trolls, or was his wound bothering him so appallingly that he was beginning to become apathetic, no longer wishing to live? Aragorn made a mental note to tend to the brave Ring-bearer and ask how Frodo felt after he had shown that the trolls were stone. The tall man decided that the group could rest in that glade in the Trollshaws, and possibly reminisce about Bilbo's adventures almost eighty years before. All would certainly be interested, particularly the two girls, unfamiliar with any of their customs an clueless to the extent of the peril they were all in. Aragorn was beginning to consider telling them about the Ring, but he decided, that is not for me to decide, nor am I a hundred percent sure of their worth, though they seem trustworthy. Aragorn glanced upwards at the sun, now high in the sky, as he led the others on towards the glade.  
  
The group halted on the edge of the glade with abated breath, peering through the thick tree trunks at the massive silhouettes of three trolls. One was stooping for something, while the other two had their gazes fixed on the first.  
  
Aragorn strode right into the glade nonchalantly, hitting the stooping troll with a powerful wallop which caused the stick to break in two, while saying, "Get up, you old stone!" Nothing else to speak of occurred as a result.  
  
The others gasped with wonder, and then all the hobbits, even Frodo, laughed. "Well, I'll be!" the eldest of the four hobbits said. Straightening on Bill with newfound vigor. "We are forgetting our family history! These must be the exact three caught by Gandalf, quarreling over how to cook thirteen dwarves and one small hobbit!" He pushed himself up with his good arm to squint closer at the trolls, surprised to note that his pain seemed to be trivial.. for the moment. April and Libby exchanged baffled glances with one another.  
  
"I had no idea we were near the place, Strider!" Pippin said, who knew the story well but had never more than half believed it. His hazel eyes were focused on the trolls with a doubtful skepticism, wondering if they would suddenly spring to life again.  
  
Aragorn half-smiled as he took note of the young hobbit's misgivings, and also the puzzlement of the two girls. "You are forgetting not only your family history, but all you ever knew about trolls.," Strider said, sounding amused. "It is midday with san exceptionally bright sun, yet you two come back trying to scare me with a tale of live trolls waiting here for us! In any case you might have noticed that this one has a birds nest behind his ear, that would be a most unusual ornament for a live troll!"  
  
They all burst out laughing, even Libby and April, who got this jest by Strider. It was a relief knowing that this Strider, who was usually so tense and stern, had a sense of humor. The two teenagers grinned at each other, liking this newfound side of the man.  
  
Frodo, meanwhile, felt his morale reviving, it was cheering to be reminded of Bilbo's first success in his many adventures. The sun was warm and a source of comfort, and the mist shrouding his vision seemed to be clearing, and he could see the faces of his friends more clearly. Strider announced that they could have a brief rest in the glade, and they had the mid-day meal right in the shade of the enormous trolls.  
  
"That's a very interesting tale!" April declared when Frodo had given a brief recap of his uncle Bilbo and the adventure with these very trolls. The Asian-American girl idly braided a few small strands of her hair, smiling at the hobbit. "Feel free to tell more when you feel up to it." April took another bite out of her apple. She was glad to see than even Frodo was managing to eat somewhat normally, the hobbit seemed to be enjoying the apple and stewed rabbit Strider had served. She and Libby weren't accustomed to eating such animals as rabbits, but here in the wilderness the unusual food was quite satisfactory.  
  
"What of where you two are from? We haven't heard much from you save the tale of Libby's cat prank," Pippin said, hoping to hear of more caper of a younger Libby, or April's jokes.  
  
"Well.." April began, trying to get the faintest inkling of a story of either herself or Libby. "What can I say? She had no regards of rules regarding being quiet as a little kid, and she's never been much on punctuality, I must say. Oh! I think I remembered something.. To the words school fair mean anything to you, Libberoni?"  
  
Merry laughed at this latest variant on Libby's name; April certainly seemed to adore giving her friend nicknames. So far, he could remember Libbers, the Libster, and now Libberoni. "If this is another joke I want to hear it!"  
  
Libby smiled, fondly remembering that April seemed to be referring to. Before Liberty could lose this recollection, she plunged into the tale. "At the fair they had this booth where if you throw something and hit a red target, you knock the person sitting in the booth into a pool of water. My teacher was the one in the chair."  
  
"Don't tell me your aim was true and you struck the target," Pippin said with enthusiasm, enthralled by the description of the pool. He could think of a few choice individuals back in the Shire who he would dearly yearn to knock into water, preferably the Brandywine!  
  
"Even better," Libby said, a devious smirk playing at the corner of her lips. "I am actually totally uncoordinated, as I'm surprised you didn't figure out by now, Pip. I missed the target. But I did get him."  
  
"Aww," Pippin said, wondering what the climax of Libby's little glimmer of memory would be. He felt slightly foolish, he had known that Libby had a rather poor aim whenever she attempted to throw things.  
  
"Well, if you missed, you had to get the balls when you finished your turn. I like, went to get mine. The balls hard hit the tarp covering the target, right? And like, I had to get them, and the button was right there, sticking out, ready to be hit by the balls." With these words, April began snickering at the suddenly memory of herself and Chelsey in peals of delight as they watched their friend pull off a brave, hilarious feat.  
  
"Oh, my, did you do what I believe you did?" Merry asked, grinning widely. Pippin's eyes were also sparkling with his characteristic curiosity, while Sam and Frodo were merely listening with sober half-smiles on their lips. Aragorn was boiling some more athelas to tend to the ailing Frodo, despite the fact that Frodo seemed to be improving. The Ranger knew from experience in the House of Elrond that sometimes patients seemed to be getting better, but the phase was normally the clam before the storm, and a turn for the worse would occur, killing the patient if left unchecked. He did not want to risk letting his guard down.  
  
"Well, that button was just too tempting. I kind of gave it just a tiny little nudge, and it worked! My teacher fell in! In front of everybody!" Libby was fond of the most public shenanigan she'd executed. For the moment, she remembered the claps and hoots of appreciation at her little stunt. She wished that she still had the gall to pull a scandalous fast one such as at the fair in fifth grade. Those high-fives, pats on the back, and the high register on the laughter scale had been very satisfying.  
  
Merry and Pippin sniggered, wishing that the Libby sitting before them was the gangling eleven-year-old version of the girl she seemed to enjoy talking about, rather than the slightly aloof teenager. And if Libby was slightly distant and secretive, it was nothing compared to the dark- haired girl at her side. Frodo couldn't help but laugh also, remembering the Terror of Brandy Hall, but Sam remained solemn.  
  
"Would you like to hear what I enjoyed doing as a lad?" Frodo asked, the faintest of glimmers of lethargy in his voice which only Aragorn and Sam could discern. "Trespassing onto the property of others. I am very fond of mushrooms, and this one farmer had the best in all the Shire! He was constantly vexed over it, and on the last occasion he got a hold of me and beat me. He has these ferocious dogs, and they chased me quite a ways after he beat me and showed me to them. I missed a good friend over those capers!"  
  
"Hey.. I sneaked onto somebody's farm, too!" Libby said. April straightened up, she'd never heard this before. "I was living in this area of apartments attached to one another called Farmside Gardens, because they were by a farm." April was not enraptured, she had rarely heard Libby speak of the two years she'd lived in that not-so-pleasant neighborhood of River City. She knew that wasn't a memory lapse of hers either, Libby just seemed to have inhibitions of remembering that area. Knowing of police reports she could suddenly recall, April was hardly surprised, theft, arson, and assault were a fact of life in the apartment complex. Farmside Gardens for Libby was April's malevolent Ouija board, usually a form of entertainment at parties, but April's had gone amiss, nearly proving to be her bane. Yet nobody believed her, save a sophomore called Sheila Wagner who'd suffered a similar experience, and possibly Libby, who had been divulging ominous revelations about her own game board recently.  
  
Sam seemed to have a apart of interest at the mention of gardens, but realized that the taller girl probably wouldn't be talking about plants. At other times he would have been just as keen on the stories as Merry and Pippin, but he was too worried about Frodo. He sensed that Frodo might feel worse than he was letting on, and he brushed against Frodo's left hand under the pretenses of examining the blades of grass. The appendage was ice cold and had a grayish pallor. Naturally, this did not alleviate his anxieties. He could hear Libby going on and on, interrupted sometimes by Merry or Pippin. Frodo was merely listening, but not adding to the conversation. That was another sign of something amiss, as Frodo normally liked to be in the thick of things, or at least that was how he had been before things happened. Libby was now talking about peaches.  
  
"I fell in with a bad crowd, I don't mean the harmless prankster like myself or Merry or Pippin, but truly malicious people.. I won't go on about how they weren't good people. I'll just say that we usually snuck onto some old geezer's farm and stole peaches off of his trees. Sometimes we smashed them, other times we ate them or took them with us.. That was the most harmless thing those I misjudged and counted as friends and I did, which should say something." April stared at Libby, making a mental note to ask the blonde to explain exactly how these people really were when they got their complete memories of the past back. She watched her friend stare down at the ground, appearing hesitant to say any more.  
  
"Won't somebody give a bit of some, while the sun is high? We haven't had one of those for days!" Merry said. Libby immediately shrank back, knowing she tended to sing off-key without an accompaniment of music.  
  
"Not since Weathertop," Frodo said without warning. He wanted to convince his friends that he was on the mend, and actually speaking of where he'd been wounded in the first place would be convincing. When six pairs of eyes (two blue-gray, two silver-gray, two hazel, and six brown) turned upon him, Frodo added," Don't worry about me, I feel much better! I don't believe I could sing, though, perhaps Sam could dig something out of his memory?"  
  
Sam indeed was able to excavate a song; a tale of a troll and someone called Tom, who lost a bone to a troll.  
  
"There's a warning to us all, it's a good thing you used a stick, and not your hand, Strider!" Merry chortled, grinning at the Ranger. Pippin, meanwhile, was more interested in the origins of the song.  
  
"How did you get that, Sam?" the inquisitive young hobbit asked. "I've never heard those words before!" April and Libby caught each other's eyes, sharing a sly grin, simultaneously thinking of choice words that their companions had most likely never heard uttered, but shocked the elderly of their life in River City.  
  
Sam muttered something none of his companions could catch, and Frodo answered what he surmised for them. "I am learning a lot about Samwise Gamgee on this expedition! First a conspirator, and now a jester. He'll end up a wizard or a warrior!  
  
"Oh, I hope not," Sam answered passionately, "as I don't want to be neither!" this response spawned more chortles.  
  
In the afternoon the group continued to trek through the woods, following the very track that Gandalf, Bilbo, and the dwarves used many years before, before any save Aragorn had even been born. A few miles on, they finally reached a high bank directly above the road, which was now winding close to the feet of the hills. After Aragorn pointed out a stone covered with runes and they paused briefly to discuss it, they continued onward.  
  
"Evening drew upon them as the seven travelers reached the road. Now that the y no longer had to seek any paths, they went off as quickly as they were able. They merely had to look around for a place off the road to camp for the night.  
  
Before long, a dreaded sound was heard which rekindled trepidation in their hearts: the sound of hoof beats, coming up quickly behind them. Libby shrank to April's side, and the two girls clung to each other's arms, unable to detect anything from merely listening to the sound of a horse's hooves. They quickly scrambled off the road, concealing themselves among hazel bushes. Aragorn lifted Frodo off of Bill and carried the hobbit into the shrubbery, while Sam led Bill to a taller patch in which the pony could conceal itself.  
  
Frodo felt slightly terrified as he crouched within the hazel plants next to Strider, wondering if the Black Riders had come to finish him off in his weakened condition. The mere worry was causing the dark fog to gather again, hindering his vision. He knew that today had been too good to be true, especially in the Trollshaws. As he listened intently to the canter, he suddenly heard a noise as if bells were tingling, and relief.. warm, singing, glorious relief, washed over him. "That doesn't sound like the horse of a Black Rider!" he declared, still listening to the clippity- clops. The others thought he was right, but remained hesitant, a product of having feared pursuit for so many days. Everything unfamiliar now filled them with distrust, their worse fear was a second, worse Weathertop. Aragorn, however, had his ear pressed to the ground, a surprisingly joyous expression on his face.  
  
Author's Note: This chapter has gotten rather long, I'll have the coming of an Elf in chapter seven.. Lucky seven! *grins* I'm sure if you have read my previous commentaries, I expect you've developed the ability to post a review! So, tell me, how many stars? How many thumbs up (or down)? Any suggestions on your part? Should I keep going, or abandon the story? (I fear when I move, I'll be obliged to abandon it at least temporarily.. No Internet access!!) Oh, yes, and if you ever see a book called Unbinding the Stone, by Marc Vunkannon, buy it! My friend and his father the author will thank you. Oops.. I believe I'm already advertising it? Oi, I didn't mean to start.. Oops. Just review, and I'll love you forever! ~^.^~ The longer it is, the better (Kristine, Laura, get your minds out of the gutter!!) 


	7. Calm before the Storm

oOoOo~*~THIS CHAPTER HAS NOT BEEN EDITED~*~oOoOo  
  
Author's Note: Here's part seven. lucky seven! Um.. Yeah. *blinks* The calm before the storm.. I think I'll use that last line for the title of this chapter! O.o.. blame some song on my mom's CD with that line. If this chapter seems.. Odd.. At any part, you can blame the antibiotics and Robutussin I'm stuck taking.. I swear that stuff makes me high! What, no reviewers to reply to? Aww.. I'm disappointed.  
  
Disclaimer: Tolkien owns Lord of the Rings, whilst I own only the three-in- one volume, The Hobbit, and the video of The Fellowship of the Ring. I also own inside jokes with my friend Cindy over the cartoon version of The Lord of the Rings. Hey, Cindy, if you're reading this, remember Boromir's nose hair and this analogy: My height is to Linda's as Frodo's is to Bilbo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Yeesh, in the cartoon version, Frodo was over a head taller than the other hobbits? What, did he OD on an Ent-draught or something and Tolkien never mentioned it? I know Gandalf described him as "taller than some," in the book, establishing that he was a rather tall hobbit, but a head taller than all hobbits standing next to him? Gandalf said "Taller than some," not "Taller than all." Okay, I'm done rambling. *starts singing "May it Be" from the soundtrack off key* I want the lyrics to that song; I can't understand what the singer is saying!! I own nothing. Okay, I'm done, or maybe- ::gets gagged by Linda, Trisha, and Cindy all at once::  
  
The light projecting from the distance suddenly faded, and those hiding in the bushes could hear the soft rustling of the leaves. The bells drew clearer and nearer, jingling all the way, and the clippety-clip of the rapidly trotting feet became louder. Suddenly, a white horse came into view, gleaming in the surrounding dark of night, its headstall studded with gems shimmering like live stars, running swiftly. Libby audibly sucked in her breath with awe while blinking to see if her eyes were working properly, and April nudged her and put a finger to her own lips. The rider's cloak was streaming behind him, and his hood was back, revealing golden hair that made Libby's look extremely dull, shimmering with the wind of his speed. To Frodo, through the darkening mist obstructing his eyesight, it appeared as if a white light were shining through the rider.  
  
Strider leapt to his feet and dashed towards the road, advancing quickly on his very long legs and calling out, but the rider had halted before Aragorn had even moved, and was not eying the thicket where they stood entranced.  
  
When the rider saw Aragorn, he disembarked from the tall white horse and light-footedly ran to the Ranger calling out, ~"Greetings, Dunadan, at last I found you! Well met!"~ His clear, fair, ringing treble left no qualm to the hobbits that the rider was an Elf, while Libby and April merely knew that he was not a mere human. However, they noted that the Elf seemed to fear something, and was now speaking urgently to Strider. Pippin, Merry, Sam, Libby, and April were wholly clueless as to what the newcomer and the Ranger were saying, and Frodo only comprehended a minimal number of their Elvish words.  
  
"What are they?" Libby hissed to Sam, who was nearest to her excluding April. Sam seemed to not hear her question; he was eyeing the rider with an appearance of combined awe and reverence written all over his rounded face. Frodo crept a little closer to Sam, rustling the leaves slightly with his cautious, wobbling gait, and Libby distinctly heard him say, "Yes, Sam, it's an Elf."  
  
It was Libby's turn to be stupefied. Was this yet another species in this wondrous space, in which she and her friend had been dumped into without warning? The traveler had a benevolent aura about him, and his very form seemed chiseled and flawless. His gold hair shone even in the dim of the evening, and it seemed as if there were a form of light about him, despite the worry now on his face. She had the distinct impression that when merry, the Elf looked quite perfect indeed. She desired to get a closer look, but Libby stayed put lest she wind up making the wrong decision and angering Strider.  
  
Presently, Strider beckoned to the hobbits and two girls, bidding them come forth. The people concealing themselves in the bushes left their hiding place, pushing aside the branches, and rushed down towards the road. Even Frodo managed to keep the pace of the others for once, despite the pain it triggered.  
  
"This is Glorfindel, who dwells in the House of Elrond," Aragorn said, indicating the Elf, as soon as his companions caught them up. The Ranger then introduced the hobbits and two girls, nodding at each in turn, and calling Libby and April "chance companions met upon Weathertop."  
  
"Hail, and well-met at last!" the Elf-lord said, speaking particularly to Frodo. The Ring-bearer's face was etiolating slightly even as Glorfindel addressed him. The wound inflicted upon him nigh to two weeks before was twinging uncomfortably, pain escalating gradually but steadily with each twitch of the injury. "I was sent from Rivendell to search for you, as we feared you were in peril upon the Road."  
  
Frodo felt a sweeping joy come over him, blocking out his discomfort momentarily. Hoping his assumption was on the mark, the hobbit ecstatically exclaimed, "Then Gandalf has reached Rivendell?"  
  
This new hope was soon dashed with Glorfindel's response, as the Elf- lord stated that Gandalf had as a matter of fact not arrived, at least, not in time for his departure nine days before. The fair being disclosed that Elrond had been troubled upon the information from relatives beyond a place called the Baranduin sending messages concerning things that had been revealed to be amiss, such as that the Nine were abroad, and that Frodo was wandering astray with little security bearing an awful burden with no guidance to assist him. He affirmed that Elrond had sent out search parties in many directions in case Frodo had opted to turn off course to avoid pursuit and consequently became disoriented in the never-ending wilderness.  
  
Listening to Glorfindel's account of Elrond's orders and having driven Sauron's servants off the Last Bridge, the hobbit almost felt compelled to laugh right out loud at the accuracy of the assumptions of the Elves. Meanwhile, the pain was returning with a vengeance, beating against the fatigued Ring-bearer's already battered body. An unspeakable inertia and craving for permanent rest was creeping upon him with breathtaking rapidity, and a dark shadow was cloaking his vision, coming between him and his friends. As Glorfindel asserted his fears that the Ford would be held upon them, Frodo began to sway as a callous blend of iciness and dizziness swept over his very being. The sickly hobbit clutched at Sam's arm, and felt his knees buckle underneath him.  
  
Sam felt distressed and angry when Glorfindel spoke of prolonging their traveling time into the night without rest. How was Frodo supposed to recover when he couldn't take a much-needed break? He winced slightly at his ailing master's grip. "My master is sick and wounded!" Sam said, glaring at Glorfindel. "He cannot go on riding on after nightfall, he needs rest."  
  
Glorfindel caught the weak Ring-bearer as he sank to the ground, and lifted him gently in his arms, looking into the pallor of Frodo's face with anxiety, sensing that something was terribly wrong. He looked questioningly at Aragorn, as he had not yet been told of the attack in the dell under Weathertop. After Aragorn briefly recapped what had befallen them in the dark glade, he handed the hilt of the Morgul-knife to the Elf. Glorfindel shuddered as he took the hilt, feeling as if the evil were burning his hand, but he intently studied the letters he could see and comprehend on it. He sensed that it was inadvisable to handle the weapon more than necessary, and that the urgency for speed was greater than he had formerly guessed.  
  
"There are evil things written on this hilt, though perhaps your eyes cannot detect them. Keep it, Aragorn, until we reach the house of Elrond, but handle it as little as you may! Alas, the wounds of this weapon are beyond my skill to heal. I shall do what I can, but all the more I now urge you to continue without rest."  
  
Glorfindel opened the top couple of buttons of Frodo's shirt and slid aside his cloak, exposing the cold white mark of the lesion caused by the Morgul-blade. He inspected the would with his fingers, resisting the urgent impulse to withdraw his hand from the burning heat of the evil radiating from the would. His face grew more serious, alarmed by his own assessment. Unless a miracle of some form occurred, this Halfling had not long to live. Life seemed to be dwindling out of the Ring-bearer by the millisecond.  
  
Frodo, however, felt a renewed hope stir within his soul, awakened by the Elf's touch. The chills lessened and the faintest glimmer of warmth slipped down from his bad shoulder to his hand as the pain lifted a bit. The mist dispersed in front of his eyes, and he could see the faces of his friends more clearly than minutes, even hours, before. He gave Glorfindel a small, grateful sort of smile.  
  
Glorfindel looked from Frodo to Aragorn to Frodo's other companions, then between Bill and his own horse, Asfaloth. Frodo was short like all hobbits, but he could still be borne by Asfaloth if the stirrups were shortened for the small creature. If Frodo rode Asfaloth, then Bill would be free once more to carry the packs, which would evidently be a great relief to Frodo's somnolent companions. What was more, if danger befell them, the simple Elvish words of "Noro lim, noro lim, Asfaloth!" would have the white steed riding off at full speed, bearing Frodo to the safety even faster than the hoses of the Nazgul could accomplish. "You shall ride my horse, Frodo," said Glorfindel. "I will shorten the stirrups for you, and you must sit as tight as you can. But never fear, my horse will never let any rider fall that I command him to bear. His pace is light and smooth, and if danger is nigh at hand he will bear you away with a speed even the steeds of the enemy cannot rival."  
  
Frodo frowned, disliking the idea of abandoning his friends to mortal jeopardy while he got off scot-free on the white Elven-horse. He basically couldn't bear the very thought. Aragorn, his servant, his kinsmen, and the two teenagers were too dear to him as friends, plain and simple. "No he won't! I shan't ride him if I'm to be carried off to Rivendell, or anywhere, leaving my friends behind in danger."  
  
Glorfindel couldn't help but smile; this response was to be expected. Frodo seemed to have friends high on his list of priorities. However, hew was missing an important point, and Glorfindel knew he would have to point it out. "I doubt very much that your friends would be endangered if you were not with them! The pursuit would follow you and leave us in peace, I think. It is you, Frodo, and that trinket you carry that brings us all into danger."  
  
Frodo had no valid argument for Glorfindel's words, and was therefore persuaded to mount Glorfindel's white horse. He felt slightly giddy as he looked down from the great height, and turned his head away, forcing himself to focus on the stallion's glistening mane, clutching the reins in his functioning right hand. Bill, meanwhile, was loaded with a good part of the weights the others had been obliged to bear for the past two weeks, and they now marched lighter, making good speed for a bit. However, all save Strider began to find it nigh upon impossible to keep up with the tireless feet of the Elf. Aragorn alone managed to keep Glorfindel's pace, though his shoulder were sagging slightly from drowsiness. Frodo remained sitting upon Asfaloth, in the throes of a dark dream featuring a fiery eye and black shapes flying all about him, surrounding him. The pain was beginning to escalate in his shoulder once more.  
  
Glorfindel finally allotted a halt when the gray of dawn arrived, a well-cherished relief to his sleep-deprived companions. They threw their bedrolls and themselves down in patches of heather a few yards from the roadside, falling asleep almost as soon as they had hit the ground.  
  
The assiduous Elf, however, remained awake after gently lowering Frodo to the ground lest the already damaged Perian topple off of the lofty horse in his fitful slumber, possibly damaging his health to a further extent. A drop could even knock the present evil into Frodo's heart by accident, proving fatal. Glorfindel surveyed the furthest reaches of his exceedingly extensive range of vision. However, all remained well, there was no whisper of a nameless fear nigh at hand. The golden-haired, fair creature calmly twiddled his thumbs as he listened to snores, light breathing, Libby continually shifting her position as was her sleeping habit, and slight gasps of pain from Frodo even as he dozed. Disturbed, Glorfindel placed a reassuring palm on the wounded shoulder, and the hobbit's breaths came easier. Having appeased the wretched hobbit, the Elf recommenced wiggling his thumbs in a serene manner characteristic of the relaxing Elf. When he decided that the sun had risen high enough, after just a couple of hours, gently began arousing the others. Aragorn and Frodo woke with a start (and a whimper of corporal tenderness and a reluctance to wake in Frodo's case) at the lightest touch, Merry and April required just a couple of prods, Sam and Pippin needed to be shaken and told to arise. Libby once again displayed her skills as a heavy sleeper by paying no heed to the shakes and urgent words of, "Wake up, Libby!".  
  
Instinctively, the heads of some of the others, excluding Frodo, Glorfindel, and Aragorn, turned towards April's directions. The black- haired teenager gave a small sigh of minor vexation, feeling that her having to awaken Libby was getting redundant, yet she knew best how to do so. Deciding that somehow changing something in the vicinity or merely staring at her face as she slept until the blonde changed position would be too time-consuming, April leaned in close next to Libby's ear and murmured, "Did you know that the hair on Clayton Cibbige's balls is very easy to braid? I managed to do cornrows!" She had utilized something Libby had told her about something her friend, Liz or something like that, had said that Clayton had said. She knew that would jerk Libby awake with a start.  
  
"WHAT?!" Libby shot straight up from her bedroll, accidentally knocking heads with April. She mechanically held her hand against the spot she'd just bumped, while April was knocked off her feet by the force of Libby's bedroll. She climbed to her feet, holding her sore head in her hands.  
  
"Sorry, April," Libby said remorsefully, hoping she'd done no damage to her friend. She could remember another head-butting episode from what seemed to be, and probably was, a former life. Both girls now had a memory for funny events, snippets of favorite songs, and major events, but not humdrum things such as their classes, books they'd read, movies they'd watched, or their everyday routines at home.  
  
"Aw, man, it's no wonder you managed to take out some girl with two inches and 50 pounds on you.. You've got a pretty damn hard head!" The Asian began giggling, ignoring the slight throbs pulsing in her head.  
  
"Don't remind me of that.. But holy shit, talk about a rude awakening!" Libby said with a laugh as she folded up her bedroll.  
  
Pippin, meanwhile, was displeased to discover that the meager rations remaining for their use were stale bread and dried fruit, and the displeasure was evident in his hazel eyes. "Is this all we have?" the young hobbit complained.  
  
Glorfindel and Aragorn simultaneously shook their heads in the affirmative, and the Took's discontentment increased substantially. This was exactly what he did not want to hear. Glorfindel rummaged in his small bag and withdrew a silver-studded leather flask, which turned out to be filled with a clear liquid.  
  
"Drink this," the Elf advised, pouring the flagon into a small cup for each in turn, knowing the wholesome liquid would stifle some of the aches of sleep-deficit. The tasteless substance caused a flow of vigor all the way to their extremities as they drank. After they'd drank the liquor, the stale food seemed more satisfying than many a good feast.  
  
Less than five hours after the rest had began, the eight two-legged and two four-legged travelers took to the road again, going along as fast as they could without actually running the entirety of the way. Both guides seemed almost overcome with anxiety, stopping every now and then to listen into the silence, particularly if anyone fell behind. Aragorn and Glorfindel, the expert on this locality, led the group, followed by Bill with the bags, then Libby with the shorter April struggling to keep her tall, long-legged friend's pace, and then there was a considerable gap between the girls and the hobbits. Merry was leading Frodo on Asfaloth, while Pippin and Sam took up the rear. Frodo's pain was redoubling, and the others could notice an audible whimper coming from their fading friend whenever he shifted position in the saddle, or inhaled too vigorously.  
  
Frodo was almost ready to give up the remainder of his hope, and consoled himself only with the though of "It's just over a day, and I'll be safe in Rivendell. I've made it this far, haven't I? I have to finish what I've started; I chose to live." He just hoped he hadn't made the wrong decision when he'd resolved to fight or life with everything he had. If he lost despite the efforts of Aragorn, Glorfindel, and everyone, his own will to live would have been wasted. He lifted his head slightly to have look down and about at the pale gray shapes enveloping him, and felt dizzy waves of cold and pain-induced nausea wrack his slight frame. Shivering, Frodo attempted to tighten his cloak around his body with his one working hand, and accidentally knocked a couple of the blankets heaped upon him off in the process when he gave a jerk of pain from accidentally jarring his own wounded shoulder.  
  
"Frodo? Strider, someone, come back here, some of his blankets fell off!" Pippin shouted as loud as his small voice would go. Aragorn spun around from the front of the line and sprinted all the way back to the hobbits, telling Glorfindel to continue leading everyone on.  
  
"You shouldn't shout so," Aragorn chided, suddenly realizing that Pippin's slipshod yells could have attracted unsolicited attention to them. His nerves felt stretched almost to the breaking point, and his tension could have been cleaved by the stroke of even a dull knife.  
  
Pippin looked down at his hairy feet and mumbled something akin to "sorry, Strider." Aragorn gently ruffled his light brown curls, and stopped to pick up the blanket. Before rewrapping the injured fellow in the blankets, Aragorn took a long look at the unremittingly shivering frame. Frodo was getting paler and paler, and the Ring-bearer seemed to be in pain worse than ever before. Aragon/Strider felt a stab of pity as he looked into the dulled blue eyes that had formerly been so jubilant and lively. Rubbing Frodo's back in what he hoped was in a reassuring sort of manner, Aragorn replaced the covers around the enervated Ring-bearer.  
  
After covering nearly twenty miles or so, the procession came upon a bend in the road. They made the right turn and were now heading straight for the Bruinen towards the bottom of the valley. So far, there had been no sign of pursuit, yet Frodo was held by a premonition that they knew his proximity to Rivendell and wouldn't let him get to safety and healing so easily as they were trying to lead him and his allies to assume. The hobbit clutched the reins tightly in his right hand, trying to draw sensation away from his other shoulder and hand, but it was no good.. He was being enveloped in this infernal, all-consuming misery. He was almost relieved of the coming of night, when the world seemed clearer, and less pale and empty.  
  
Though Frodo had it the worst, he wasn't the only one in the company experiencing discomfort. The other three hobbits were stumbling over nearly every footstep, lightheaded with lethargy, heeding naught but their overworked feet and legs. Libby was finally going slower, but so was April, and the later had given up on the attempt to match her all-legged friend's wide velocity. Aragorn's shoulders seemed to be slumping forward slightly, for though he had an extraordinary stamina and resilience, he was, after all, a mere mortal man, Numenorean descent or not. He was beside himself with fretting about Frodo, having noticed Frodo's fading and the Ring- bearer's growing reluctance to wake up or move. Things were so hard for the poor hobbit, and he sensed an impending trial to come. This was merely the eerie calm before the violent, tumultuous storm. 


	8. Struggle at the Ford

oOoOo~*~THIS CHAPTER HAS NOT BEEN EDITED~*~oOoOo  
  
Author's note: Er. blah blah, blah. I dunno what to put in this one. Er. mo0o0o0o0? Cheese is yummy. So are mushrooms. And you mustn't for get pizza and especially CHOCOLATE. Hmm.. Sounds like quite a yummy meal, no? Food. Meh! I want to go to track practice, why did I have to go and get sick?? And.. Happy half-birthday to me! (This author's note was written March 13th, 2003... The day Libby and April were dumped into Middle-earth! oOoOo And also the anniversary of Shelob's poisoning.. Aww, poor Frodo! *huggles Frodo dearest* Not MORE pain for him!) And if anyone is planning on suggesting a romance between Libby or April and others, don't even go there. I'm being sure to show that they're not into romance or flirting. Anyway, the fellowship guys are all at least 13 years older, starting with Pippin as the youngest, and I don't believe Tolkien meant for them to be pedophiles! That's why I loathe the Mary-Sues pairing a teenaged girl with say, Legolas, or Aragorn. *shudder* My personal favorite is human girl/hobbit. Er, cross-races? I know Aragorn and Arwen and Beren and Luthien were cross-race romances, but Men and Elves are similar heights! Besides, I bet those romances are exceptions to the rule, otherwise why would they be so renowned? *tries to imagine a hobbit and a human screwing each other*  
  
Anyway, basic labels of Libby and April, though they don't really fit under any one label in my opinion. Libby's a tomboy/brainiac/computer geek while April's an artist/goth/punk/emo. Both laugh at those who try to fit neatly into cliques, both don't give a hot about romance or popularity. They both a separate set of friends which could be called "their clique" but they're basically their own entity because they basically trust each other and almost no other.  
  
WeasleyTwinsLover1112: Haha, I know I'm a pervert. I invented the cornrows part myself, though the balls part is from a combo of a LOT of in-jokes among my friends concerning balls.. Anduril: Well, I did this chapter pretty fast, but I fear I'll take much longer in part 9.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ Disclaimer: I already did seven of these, why do I have to do an eighth one? Just to mention something completely off-topic: I'd like to have an average of three or four reviews per chapter, please help me reach my goal.  
  
When it was plain that the weary travelers could go no further that night, the guides led them about thirty yards or so away from the road, setting up the bedrolls in a field of tall grass, some of which was higher than the heads of the two shorter hobbits, Pippin and Sam, coming level with Merry, and even Frodo. Libby was annoyed by the grass which came up to her high waist, and she stomped on one patch in frustration. Aragorn gently prompted her not to make too much commotion. They set up their bedrolls, and almost the whole company fell asleep upon hitting their bedrolls. Frodo seemed to have drifted off on Asfaloth, and after Aragorn had gently checked to see if he was merely sleeping by bringing an indisposed Frodo out of what could become a comatose state, he carried the Ring-bearer to his bedroll. Aragorn and Glorfindel had noted his mounting unwillingness to stir and wake up, and had decided that it was inadvisable to let Frodo fall too deeply into sleep, despite the reality that the exhausted hobbit desired the relief.  
  
Though tired, April and Libby volunteered to do part of a watch, as they had things they wished to whisper to each other in the dead of night, reminiscences of erstwhile times with friends. Glorfindel also stayed awake, so that the girls would be able to fall asleep if they wished. The Elf let the girls whisper to each other, figuring they were taking a much- needed break for exclusively socializing. He noted the faint circles outlining the eyes of all but Frodo, whose under eye circles were an ominous sort of greenish-yellow, to go along with his wan skin tone..  
  
"You know what these night watches remind me of?" Libby whispered, huddled with April, as she tried to separate a knot in her golden-blonde hair with a frown. Her hair was really flaunting its naturally curly texture, as it hadn't been groomed since Libby could remember. She had a comb, but it had long ago lost its competence, and Libby figured she'd have to wet her hair to disentangle it. Her unruly curls looked dull and frizzy, and her fine hair was beginning to become identical to a yellow dust mop. April's usually glossy black hair, which as thick and straight, the total opposite of Libby's, did not have quite so obvious tangles, but it was hanging limp and dull.  
  
"What?" said April, watching Libby struggle with her hair. She smiled; she knew that Libby's priorities were mainly realistic, but she did tend to have a slightly excessive concern for her appearance. She knew that Libby wasn't interested in popularity or romance, she just enjoyed dressing for fashion. "I wouldn't even bother, it'll just get messy again anyway."  
  
"I want your hair, April!" Libby groaned with frustration. "Anyway, I feel like I'm on sentry duty at that boot camp I went to in Rhode Island. The good ones I had with Claudia Jameson, not that one where I was unfortunate enough to land with Nora Schlox. I'm surprised that she even joined ROTC.. I never pictured her as the military type. Wait, she likes hitting on everything walking around with a dick," she added in a low voice. "Gym class too.. Aargh, and she's scared of the ball!" Libby rolled her eyes, she viewed guys as fun to play sports with, not fun to date. Neither Libby nor April had ever had a true boyfriend or romantic interest in anybody they'd met, they just didn't care for "sappy love stuff."  
  
April thought she could catch an expression of dislike upon Libby's face at the mention of Nora. It was no new information that Libby detested the girl though she was polite to her on the outside, she remembered Libby recently referring to her as that "ditzy, perky little bimbo." To be honest, she rubbed April slightly the wrong way, maybe because Libby wasn't normally such a harsh judge of people she made small-talk with. "Really? How were those anyway? We never got into boot camp because of all that other shit that distracted me. Tell me everything you can make yourself remember, please."  
  
April gave Libby a small hug as she said this, feeling guilty for that time in which she'd neglected Libby slightly, causing Libby to withdraw and start spending more time with those who acted as if they enjoyed her company such as Cara Czynski and Traci Morris. However, April had finally resolved the traumatic events which nearly caused her to shatter the friendship, and it had withstood the sudden, unexpected trial, returning stronger than ever it had been before. She gave an involuntary shudder, but quickly regained her composure to finally make an effort to squeeze boot camp details out of Libby.  
  
"The last night was the best," Libby said with relish, remembering how she and Claudia had stated over and over that they didn't really want to go to bed that night, but would gladly have pulled an all-nighter to allow the others to sleep. They had taken the earliest shift that night, after the graduation party consisting of pizza, soda, Pringles, and basketball. "Claud and I had so much fun."  
  
"What did you and Claudia do?" April asked, half-expecting a tale of some escapade which could have ended in punishment, yet remembering that Claudia was a reserved sort who hated even bending the rules.  
  
"I don't know.. Maybe it was all that pizza and soda we got to eat in the watch, dunno. I know it wasn't the note-writing part, though that was actually funny though because people kept walking up and down stairs for some reason. There were lots of post of "unknown male comes up stairs. Unknown male makes head call. Unknown male goes downstairs. Unknown male comes back upstairs. Unknown male goes back downstairs. Unknown male comes back upstairs with two friends. All three go into head. All three go down and come back up, all three go down the hall.. Then the DI told us we only had to record people walking past our post. But it was really funny, him pacing up and down the stairs faster than I or Claudia could write."  
  
April laughed, picturing major writer's cramp resulting from Libby trying to keep tabs on an unknown male. "Anything else you guys did?"  
  
Libby frowned for a moment, then recalled something else. "The scale! We both really wanted to know if we'd lost any weight from boot camp, I know I certainly expected to! But they kept force-feeding us milk and juice so I didn't really lose anything, though she somehow lost like eight pounds. I was like, unfair!"  
  
Libby broke off when they heard a loud crunching noise. Both girls jumped, but then realized that if had been Sam accidentally rolling right off his bedroll in his slumber. Glorfindel noiselessly got up and gently rolled Frodo's servant back onto the bedroll without even waking the chubby hobbit.  
  
"Ahh, night-noises," April said. "Hold on.. I'm curious now.. What kind of night noises were at the boot camp?"  
  
Libby gave her friend an odd look for caring about something such as night-noises, but then remembered that there /had/ been some rather interesting ones. "You mean besides the D.I.s yelling 'Get the hell out of bed right now, little shits!' while banging on the doors? Well, there was this one really windy night, and somebody had forgotten to shut a window. And I'm not kidding when say windy! Anyway, we all sleep with our dorm doors closed, but they were loosely hinged, you know? Y'know, from all the slamming we had to do at night and stuff. So this one night it was IMPOSSIBLE to sleep because the doors were creaking and rattling and basically making one hell of a noise. One door lacked the ability to even close all the way, the laundry room door, and it kept banging against the frame and opening up again. According to the night watch log, someone finally figured out that a window was open after what? Two hours of an almighty racket? Then there were the whispers... And believe me, they scared the life out of me, because I could have sworn I'd heard "Libby" and "Liberty" and "Artlong" in them, I was like, er, help? I'm hallucinating? It was like, "Liiiibby.. Libby Artlong.." Then I caught other things, nonsense about homework, and I asked Violet, you know, Violet van Dyke, from Library Club in 8th grade, if she could hear them, wondering if she would think I was nutso. But she said to me, "I do hear things like whisper.. They're scaring me!' So I answered, 'good, I'm not losing my sanity here then..' Then there were the flushing toilets and the constant whirring of the laundry machine.. Enough to drive one to the brink of insanity. I think the worst was the whispers, though."  
  
"Did you ever find out what they were?" April asked, listening to her older friend literally going on and on about boot camp. She wished that she had attended ROTC from the get-go rather than deciding to join almost the full way into September. Then the Commander had said it was too late, and she would have to join the next year. April held a slight grievance against him for that, as she strongly suspected he'd done that because she was a girl. This thought was confirmed when Libby had said they were allowing new boys into the program, that the commander was being a male chauvinist. Not all girls are like those airheads that seem to run the student body of our school, we don't all focus the whole of our lives on hair and make-up! Just half an hour ad day if that, for Libby, even less for me.  
  
"Oh, yeah.. Nora Schlox and Tia Teeterman, Tia and Claud and I have talked about boot camp at lunch a couple of times. Claud said she and her roomie Genevieve had heard the whispers too, and Tia admitted they were probably her and Nora. I was really tempted to be like, you guys were talking about me? Thanks!"  
  
April wanted to chuckle, listening to her friend the Libster blather on in spite of weariness. That was Libby all over, and one of the things April liked about her when they wished to distract themselves from the seriousness of things.  
  
"You know where I wish I was right now?" Libby asked after a lengthy moment of silence.  
  
April looked up from her lap, wondering what on Middle-earth her friend could be talking about. Suddenly, with a start, she realized that she had thought something along the lines of what Aragorn or Frodo or any of the natives would be thinking. That's weird.. "Where, Libster?"  
  
"I want to be back at that party fund-raiser thingy our school had a couple of weeks ago, playing volleyball. God, I had such fun that night.. It was right before I ended up sick nearly a week. A fluke actually occurred, and I was playing well, even 'showing up' a couple of guys!" Libby said, with an almost pensive laugh. April was startled; could Libby possibly be experiencing pangs of homesickness?  
  
"I wish I could have gone, but my mom said no,. At least Cara and Josie were there, and Tyanne."  
  
"Yeah.." Libby said, gnawing on her lip lightly. She laid herself down on her back, and stared up at the starry night. April rolled over onto her side.  
  
Glorfindel watched the two girls falling asleep and decided not to awaken them. He was a perfectly efficient sentry on his own, while Libby and April were weary and somewhat unfocused. His clear blue eyes stared up at the stars, doing an inventory of their names in his Elvish mind while listening for a possibility of imminent jeopardy. He was beginning to feel a sense of foreboding, as if peril or Frodo's death were imminent. If his paranoia was not unfounded, Glorfindel hoped it was the former and former alone. Frodo would be all right, he had to be.  
  
When the eight companions set out practically at the crack of dawn, the hobbits, Libby, and April were still sluggishly tired. They knew they could reach the ford that day if they tried, and staggered along at as quick a stride as their aching legs could manage. Frodo remained positioned on Asfaloth, flaccid and slumped onto the pony's neck, barely aware of the fact that he was alive and breathing, let alone the presence of his friends.  
  
"Our peril will be at its height just ere we reach the river," Glorfindel confided in Aragorn. The Ranger's already fixed frown of concern deepened. "My heart warns me that pursuit is now swift behind us, and other danger may be waiting at the Ford."  
  
Any who looked closely could see Aragorn's complexion etiolating considerably. The heir of Isildur's heart was already wrung with fear, compassion for Frodo, and slight culpability that there was no more in his power to do for the sick hobbit. He ardently hoped that Glorfindel was wrong, but Elves were rarely mistaken. Aragorn continued advancing downhill on his very long-legged pace with Glorfindel, followed by the hobbits, Libby, and April. Grass was on either side of the road, and the hobbits and teenaged girls walked in these grassy patches when they could in an effort to ease the discomfort in their aching feet. Libby had loosened the laces of her backless sneakers, which had been a nuisance whenever they were walking on a rocky terrain, and allowed her feet to continually slip out of the sneakers now that the ground was reasonably level. She was debating whether to just slip off her sneakers and carry them.  
  
In the late afternoon, the procession came to a place where the road passed through a grove of pine trees, then plunged into a cutting through stone with steep walls of moist stone. Most of the travelers save Aragorn felt a surprise at the sudden change of scenery. The sounds of their every step seemed to ricochet throughout the cutting and Frodo's sore head, and there seemed to be the resonance of many footfalls following their own. They believed, or rather, hoped, that the footfalls were also mere reverberations of their own, though Glorfindel and Aragorn ha their doubts. Aragorn chose not to entertain such dark thoughts unless it was necessary, and kept his fears to himself.  
  
As they traipsed along the trail, Frodo ducked his head into Asfaloth's neck and held his useful arm over his head in an attempt to obliterate the painful echoes while his left arm drooped limp and lifeless at his side. He could still feel the echoes resonate all through his tender skull, and he screwed up his face in a grimace, twisted in pain, as he felt as if his shoulder and head were expressly selected to bear the brunt of flagellation. "I know I keep asking, Strider, but how much further is it to Rivendell?" Frodo whimpered dolefully, writhing in his seat slightly.  
  
Aragorn cringed at the unshed tears that seemed to be clinging to his eyelashes, and felt remorseful that he was unable to administer any treatment sufficient to cure the hobbit of his wound. "We are nearly there, we will be there before today is old."  
  
As they exited the tunnel, a sharp incline and then another bit of road nigh upon a mile's length stretched beyond them, and the Ford of Rivendell could be faintly seen in the distance. Frodo glanced up and his heart leapt with newfound hope, but another spurt of pain issued from his wounded shoulder, causing the injured hobbit to almost double up sitting upon the horse. Aragorn rubbed his back gently in an effort to encourage the hobbit. However, Frodo was not comforted. The pain was swelling by the millisecond, and he felt a wave of almost irresistible weariness fall upon him like a dark cloud. The Ring-bearer slouched forward, blanching, shivering like a leaf with the cold. Meanwhile, he felt as if he could detect an unnamed, ancient fear that was impelling his hurt to worsen in intensity.  
  
Glorfindel's heart leapt upon spotting the Ford up ahead, but dropped like a stone when the Elf's quick ears picked up the still-existing echo as if feet were following. His worst fears were clearly confirmed, and he had to bid the Ring-bearer to flee, making for the Ford of Bruinen. He turned and listened, and, sensing the malevolent atmosphere about the noise of the treads, sprang forward with a loud, panicked cry.  
  
"Fly!" Glorfindel called, a sound of supreme exigency in his very tone. "Fly! The enemy, the servants of darkness, are upon us!"  
  
April muttered something sounding remarkably like, "Oh, crap, we're screwed." The white horse leapt forward at a canter. Merry, Sam, Pippin, and the girls ran down the sharp slope, skidding and stumbling, while Aragorn and Glorfindel took up the rear, ready to stave off the enemy when necessary. They'd only progressed halfway across the flat when the clamor of galloping horses reached their ears without warning. Panicking, the hobbits and girls sped up. If Libby was being timed, she would have beaten her personal record by at least half a minute with the surge of terrified adrenaline coursing through her system. She barely noticed the violent rapidity of her breathing or the "stitch" forming in her side. She was in the lead behind Asfaloth bearing Frodo, and April was second of those on foot, followed by Pippin, Merry, and Sam, bunched together and scampering in a mad dash. Out of the gate in the trees they had just left rode a Black Rider, who halted, reining in his horse and swaying portentously in his saddle. Four more followed their leader, the Witch-King.  
  
"Ride forward!" Glorfindel cried imperatively to Frodo. "Ride forward!"  
  
Frodo heard Glorfindel's cries, but also felt an outlandish reluctance seizing him, a present from the commanding wish of his enemies. He knew an attempt to resist would hurt him terribly and perhaps kill his squandering strength, so he inhibited his horse, pulling on the reins, and turned to look back.  
  
The Riders sat upon their great steeds, as if threatening, maleficent statues upon the hill, dark yet in painful prominence in his line of vision. The background about them faded into a heavy mist, thicker than ever had it been before. His shoulder felt as if it would burst from the pain in his wound now tormenting him. Suddenly, a new thought awakened within the drained Baggins, and he recognized that they were telepathically demanding that he wait. Fear and hatred stirred in his tired soul, and the wrath gave him new vigor. Frodo's hand left the bridle, and gripped the hilt of his Elvish sword, the Barrow-blade, so tightly that his knuckles whitened. Then with a red flash Frodo drew his weapon.  
  
Glorfindel realized that Frodo was having difficulty obeying his counsel. "Ride on! Ride on!" the Elf insisted. When Frodo checked the Elf- steed to a walk, Glorfindel knew that either he had no instincts for leaving, or the enemy had possessed his mind and will to such an extent that he could not move. Asfaloth was straining against the reins, almost begging Frodo to let them slacken in his hand. Glorfindel realized he would have to interfere, and when Frodo let go of the bridle and drew his sword, cried, "Noro lim, Asfaloth, noro lim!" bidding the horse to ride forward at maximum speed.  
  
At once, the horse sprang forward, whipping forward like the wind along the last lap of the road, bearing the precious cargo in the direction of the Ford Bruinen. The horse and Frodo faded to a small speck in the distance. The black horses immediately sprang down the hill at maximum speed to pursue the Ring-bearer, drawn by the accursed piece of metal, as their Riders realized the danger of the impudent creature's escaping their grasp yet again. They made straight for the insolent being carrying the Ring, paying no notice of the friends. They could be dealt with after the Ring-bearer was overpowered. The small Halfling was now visible to them, on the doorsill of the world of darkness. The Witch-King felt a sadistic pleasure sweep throughout his malicious spirit, pleased to know that the wound of the Morgul-blade he'd inflicted upon the disobedient mortal was working quite nicely, causing immense pain and crushing his spirit.  
  
"Get of the road!" Glorfindel shouted, springing aside with a shocking swiftness to avoid being knocked down and crushed beneath the hooves of the accursed horses. Aragorn followed after Glorfindel, running straight off the road.  
  
"Run! Get off the road!" Aragorn repeated for Glorfindel with all the decibels his deep voice could emit. He knew that Frodo's only hope was Asfaloth, the speedy white horse, and that on foot even he and Glorfindel united couldn't overbear oppose all of the Nine at once. Sam and Merry immediately heeded Aragorn's words and dashed aside, but Pippin froze in the middle of the road. Merry, taking his life into his hands, grabbed his cousin's arm and pulled Pippin after him. Both narrowly missed being killed by the speeding horses. "Get off the road!" Merry squeaked loudly in the direction of Libby and April, who had not heard Aragorn. "Get off the Road!"  
  
Libby sprang to the side. The horses were coming closer and closer to April, bearing down the girl in the path. April felt she couldn't jump aside in time. Suddenly, chancing everything, April threw herself aside and rolled out of the way, only just managing to avoid being ridden down, and was covered in a cloud of dust in the process. Libby helped her shaking, dusty friend to her feet.  
  
Glorfindel and Aragorn did an about-face while still jogging and sprinted back to the Road, heading straight for the hobbits. "A flood will come down if the Black Riders try to cross, the power of my people ought to protect Frodo if he ever makes it across," the Elf said, panting daintily. "There is a small hollow beside the road hidden by a few stunted trees, we have to start a fire to deal with any remaining of the Nine!" At that, they dashed past the hobbits and them Libby and April, directing them to follow behind with all possible speed.  
  
Upon reaching the hollow, Aragorn and Glorfindel hastily made a fire rubbing two sticks together as Libby, Merry, and Pippin made a pile of tinder and fuel. In what seemed like no time they had produced a roaring inferno. They all took up torches, prepared to jump in giving everything they had, but Glorfindel raised his hand, saying, "Wait for the flood to hit." They tensely gripped their torches, wishing this were over with for good or for evil. Pippin was whmpering slightly out of fear, and Libby had to resist an urge to wipe her sweaty palms inside the pocket of her sweatshirt.  
  
Meanwhile, Frodo was frenziedly attempting to contend with Sauron's most vile forces, the Ring and the Nazgul, depleting the miniscule residue of his physical strength and mental energy. He heard one of the Nazgul call out as he sped away, the chilly wind whipping his face, body, and his very being, causing him to undergo severe agony from the combination of the external and internal discomfort. To his horror, he could see two horses hurtling madly in his direction, prepared to ambush him from either side. They grew ever larger and darker as their route converged with his own straight road to the river. To his utter dismay, two others were rocketing towards the Ford of Bruinen to cut off his only means of escape. Meanwhile, a tiny, ill-meaning voice within his own head urged him to slip on the Ring and disappear. However, Frodo knew better after the encounter of Weathertop. He'd slipped on the Ring in the dell intending to vanish from view, and found himself with a deadly, tremendously excruciating wound. This pain was all that prevented him from slipping the Ring onto his finger in this final desperation. He would have to remain perceptible to the unaided eye, for good or for evil.  
  
Frodo chanced a brief glance over his shoulder, causing himself some unnecessary pain, hoping for a glimpse of his friends. However, they were no linger in view. The five pursuing him from behind were getting smaller and smaller with every gallop of the white steed he was riding, the great steeds no match for Asfaloth. This diminutive prospect of luck was immediately dashed when Frodo reverted his attentions to what was ahead of him, and the thought crossed his mind that there was no chance of reaching the Ford before he was cut off by those who'd lain in ambush. Evasion seemed to be an impossibility. They were burning clear to his eyes, and their cold eyes seemed to glare holes right through him.  
  
Frodo felt as if his very mind were drowning in fear. His sword was forgotten as he shut his eyes, clinging to Asfaloth's mane for dear life as the bells attached to the harness sounded loud and shrill in his ears. The wind was causing him quite an earache, and he felt sore all over. A breath of deadly cold pierced Frodo as if it were a poisoned spear, as the horse put on an extra spurt of speed, barely averting tragedy as it whizzed passed the briefly stunned Ringwraith.  
  
Frodo heard a splash of water as Asfaloth waded into the Loudwater and began wading across. It foamed about his feet as Asfaloth crossed across the deepest part, instigating the chills trouncing Frodo's body triggered by the wound of the Morgul-blade to double. He could no longer see anything but the Nazgul, but he felt the quick jolt as Asfaloth left the Ford of Bruinen and labored up the steep bank. He had made it across the Loudwater still living.  
  
However, the Riders were at close proximity. At the top of the riverbank, Asfaloth halted and turned around, neighing hostilely. The Nine were at the water's edge below, and Frodo quailed at the very threat of their uplifted faces. He thought they could cross just as easily as he himself had done, and conquer him, Nine against one, at last. They would get the One Ring and take it to Sauron, to the ruin of all of Middle-earth. He had failed, losing the Ring upon the threshold of security. It would be useless to try to follow an uncertain path to Rivendell if the Riders traversed the river. Meanwhile, he was once again being commanded to halt, and had not the strength to rebuff their commanding wish, despite the hatred boiling in his blood. He was entirely too fraught with the odious agony enveloping his very form.  
  
The foremost Rider dourly urged his horse forward. An inch from the beginnings of the water, the horse reared upward, sensing the danger within the splash of the Loudwater. With a colossal effort, Frodo straightened, going against every substantial instinct in his mind concerning the avoidance of agony, and raised his sword in his good hand while his left arm dangled useless. He felt the situation futile, but he knew he had to go down fighting.  
  
"Go back!" Frodo entreated, begging the Riders to depart and leave him in peace with the fibers of his mind. "Go back to the land of Mordor and trouble me no more!" His voice sounded thin and shrill, a voice unlikely to be obeyed.  
  
The Riders stopped in their tracks, taunting him with a harsh, cold laughter that froze Frodo's very bones. His enemies mimicked him, crying in their fell voices, "Come back, come back! To Mordor we shall take you!"  
  
Frodo nearly urged Asfaloth back towards the Loudwater, hypnotized by the empty clairvoyant urgings of his enemies, but caught himself in time. "Go back," he said, his voice no more than a faint whisper to break the silence. "Go back," he pleaded.  
  
"The Ring! The Ring! Give up the Ring!" they cried in their noxious voices, and the leader urged his great black horse into the water, two others following suit, and then two more.  
  
"By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair," Frodo said, with a renewed, final effort, raising his sword once more, "you will have neither the ring nor me. I carry nothing you shall possess ever again."  
  
The leader rose to his full menacing stature in his stirrups, raising his hand. Frodo's tongue cleaved to his mouth, rendering him speechless, and his heart pounded in his ears. Frodo's sword broke with the strain of the leader's thoughts concentrated fully against Frodo, and fell out of the Ring-bearer's quivering hand. The elf-horse reared, nearly throwing its cargo off.  
  
At that moment, Frodo heard a roaring, then a rushing sound. Dimly, the river rose in front of his nearly blinded eyes, and he thought he could see the waves in the shape of a cavalry. He half-thought he could see white riders upon white horses with frothing manes, the total contrast of the Ringwraiths, light against the darkness.  
  
"With the remainder of his final failing senses, Frodo fancied that he'd heard shouts and saw a shining white figure on the further shore, with small shadowing forms behind it bearing flames flaring red in the blackness descending upon his world. Frodo was no longer able to fight, and he finally gave in to the confusion and the black void.  
  
The black horses were stricken with an odd madness, and they leapt forward in utmost terror brought about by their own malevolence, bearing their riders directly into the rushing flood. Their piercing cries diminished as they were borne away. Then Frodo felt himself falling, as if the mystification had engulfed him along with his enemies. All went black as he fell into the void, and his senses left him completely as his small, frail form hit the ground facedown. Asfaloth remained stock-still, standing over the lifeless form of the hobbit. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~  
  
Author's Note: Well, that's it for now! It may be a while before I get the next part because I have so many projects piled upon me by my teachers that it isn't even funny. I'd list them but I'm already at the brink of a stress breakdown. Anyway, your feedback is vastly appreciated. 


	9. Elrond's folk meets the Travelers

oOoOo~*~THIS CHAPTER HAS NOT BEEN EDITED~*~oOoOo  
  
Author's note: Hey, it's Tricia. And, yeah. Blahblahblah, this is another update, and, yeah. And, I'm assuming the race of Men refers to both men and women? Please correct me if I'm mistaken. I'm all hyper from the Bawls Guarina sodaI've just drank, haha. 80 grams of caffeine.. There's a warning label about the high caffeine content *snork* May explain why I'm wide- awake at 10:00 PM. I am approaching the final chapter of the story. The question is, should I do a sequel? I am undecided.  
  
Tawny: Wow, you definitely went on a review spree! :o) I was definitely thrilled by the number of review alerts in my inbox though, I must say. Reviews are good! That is a hint to everybody!  
  
TrueFan: I note you were too lazy to sign in *grin* So am I, a lot of the time. Lazy people unite, oh, yeah! You did outdo yourself though, and I'd like to extend quite the kudos for that. :o) I must say, though, I do tend to be forgetful, which is why I didn't e-mail you about the updates. Sorry! You're doing awesome on my Hogwarts 2020-2021 board, though. You did guess right about the POV, but I'm striving to include others, especially canon characters.  
  
WeasleyTwins1112: Aww, thanks for your review! Stress is a killer, I think that might have contributed to my being taken ill for five days and still weakened even a week later. Yikes.  
  
Anduril: Hey, I'm not sure if I responded to your review in Chapter 8, so I'll play it safe and do so here.  
  
Disclaimer: Same standard disclaimers as applying to chapters one through eight, okay? Okay? Get it? Got it? Good. Muah.  
  
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Libby's grip tightened on her torch, her perspiring hands sliding slightly, as Glorfindel murmured, "Soon, very soon indeed." She couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary save for the occasional shriek of the Black Rider, a cruel voice that appeared sufficient to freeze the bone marrow. She agitatedly gnawed her chapped lips with the purpose of preventing herself from whimpering out loud, drawing a minute amount of blood. This foreboding silence was almost more nerve-wracking than the Riders themselves.  
  
Glorfindel, in contrast, sensed an ensuing struggle at close proximity with his acute Elvish perception, and assumed that Frodo Baggins was struggling with what little precious strength remained to his debilitated body. Regrettably, there was nothing that even he, an Elf-lord, could do to alter Frodo's destiny, and what was meant to be would happen no matter how enthusiastically anyone would attempt to intervene. If the Valar and Iluvatar chose to allow Frodo to become just like the foul creature which had inflicted the deadly wound upon the Halfling's left shoulder, that was their business, although it grieved Glorfindel deeply. Nonetheless, the Ring-bearer certainly had some strength in him to have survived thus far through all the travail he had been compelled to tolerate.  
  
Suddenly, an almighty roaring din reached their ears, alerting them to the intercession of the torrent. Glorfindel leapt forward, brandishing a fiery brand in his hand, his might seeming to increase in his Wraith. To the wonder of those who did not know Elves well, he seemed to be enveloped in a white glow. Aragorn immediately followed, also wielding two brands, and Sam, Merry, Pippin, April, and Libby trailed behind with their torches, bracing themselves for an impending brawl with the deathless Black Riders, most likely to the end.  
  
There was a collective gasp from the more inexperienced travelers, all save Aragorn and Glorfindel, as they caught sight of the churning river. A couple of black horses were thrashing wildly in the water, unable to swim against the harsh current. The evil, undead beings riding upon them were cast off their struggling horses, and were being swiftly dragged downstream as they were inundated.  
  
The horses remaining on shore seemed to be overcome with dismay, unexpectedly ensnared between fire and water, while beholding an Elf-Lord in all his irate glory. The Nazgul desperately tried to check their horses, who were neighing furiously and hurtling directly for the water, mortally frightened by Glorfindel, but it was to no avail. The horses leapt into the angry swirling waters of the Bruinen and their bane. Three had already been carried away to probable death by the flood's first wave, and the others were hurled into the water by their thrashing horses and beleaguered by the tidal waves of the magic of Elven fury.  
  
After the last Nazgul had faded from sight, the water immediately seemed to recede and subside, much to the relief of those lacking the ability to swim. When the waters had pacified to their usual torpor, Glorfindel nodded to Aragorn, and the two comrades stepped into the cold waters of the Loudwater. "Come," Aragorn said in an unexplainable tone of voice which seemed to be a combination of relief and anxiety, beckoning the hobbits and girls to follow him. Sam stepped right into the water, finding himself already almost knee-deep in the freezing water.  
  
"It's cold!" Sam gasped, hugging his arms to his body, immediately beginning to shiver. His legs felt as if they were searing from a fire upon establishing contact with the water. "How deep does this river go? I cannot swim!"  
  
Upon hearing these words from the hobbit, Aragorn lifted Sam into his arms, and bade Glorfindel carry Merry or Pippin. The Ranger sensed the cold, but had a high threshold for discomfort. The Elf stepped out of the Bruinen, which felt pleasantly cool to him, and lifted Merry into his arms.  
  
"I will carry you, Merry, and return for you, Pippin, unless Libby or April think they are able to carry you," the Elf, who had faded back to his ordinary appearance, said. "Libby, April, will you two be able to cross?" Both girls nodded, but didn't move just yet.. Glorfindel stepped back into the Ford, and began wading across. Merry was draped over the Elf's shoulder, and gave a slight cry when the shock of cold water hit his feet as the tall Elf became chest-deep in the water. The 36-year-old hobbit squeezed his brown eyes shut in an effort to block out the penetrating cold, and was immensely relieved when Glorfindel reached the opposite bank.  
  
"Wait here," Aragorn instructed Glorfindel, Sam, and Merry upon reaching the bank. The Elf set his burden down on his feet, and Aragorn did likewise with Sam. Then the Ranger bravely stepped back into the Loudwater to convey Peregrin across, and see what was taking Libby and April so long. The deepest part of the Ford reached his shoulders, and he figured he could carry the pack on top of his head if Pippin felt able to hang on top being given the piggyback ride.  
  
"I actually can't swim very well.." April said, biting her lip doubtfully as she watched the receding backs of those crossing. Her mother had always worked, and even though she visited her father or the house of her cousins fairly often, nobody in her family was very interested in going to the beach. The closest she had come to going on a beach trip was once over the summer with the two Artlongs (Libby and her mother), but Libby's mother refused to allow April to come without Ms. Neverton's authorization.  
  
Nonetheless, she was grateful to Libby's mom for not harshly judging her on account of the fact that she disobeyed her mother on a daily basis by venturing all over town in lieu of coming straight home after school to an empty house and never socializing with her friends. Libby often complained that her mother was overprotective and harshly judgmental, but April envied the freedoms Libby did possess. The mother and daughter were very alike, though Libby refused to see that simple fact. And the reason most likely was that they had a strong personality imperfection in common: a fiery temper. It never took much to make Libby fly off her handle, although the blonde had a surprising ability to endure when her temper was put to its worst tests, such as in times of confrontation.  
  
One of those times was in middle school when Libby and April were hanging around a school playground, idly rocking back and forth on the swings while a bunch of notoriously intimidators were playing basketball on the court. When two who held a particular contempt against Libby took heed of the two girls on the swings, they had immediately come over to start trouble and bait a fight through first insulting Libby and mocking her then- unconventional style of dressing, then utilizing derogatory slogans against April and throwing snowballs at them. Libby had stoically let the insults to her slide, but started yelling at the girls when they called April a "chink" and a "Korean cracker," mocking her mixed blood. April inevitably lost her temper when one of the girls had pulled her long black hair, but Libby had somehow retained her sanity, perhaps realizing that twenty against two was not a hopeful struggle, and pulled April out of the brawl. Both girls had fled right afterwards, thankfully faster runners than their tormentors.  
  
"I'm not that good either, at least comparing me to the so-called standard way of swimming, but I can save myself from drowning," Libby said with a laugh. "I'll help you if I need to." The vertically gifted blonde slipped her right foot out of her backless sneaker and gingerly tested the water. She gasped at the sudden searing pain of ice against her foot. "Yikes! Jeez, this water is freezing!" She exchanged a hesitant glance with April. "On three then?"  
  
"Right. I'll count," April said, suddenly noticing Aragorn crossing back in their direction to retrieve Pippin. "One, two, three!" The black- haired girl drew back at the last second, but Libby had jumped about three feet in with a splash that sent droplets of cold water into her face. "Libby! You're right, this /is/ cold." April gulped, knowing now what she was going to be attempting to swim across. She was definitely lower than Aragorn's shoulder; the ranger had to be at least six-foot-three. Even Libby was below his chin in stature. 'Okay, April, stop being a coward," the Oriental girl silently chided herself. She took a deep breath and plunged in after Libby, resisting the urge to cry out against the shock of 40-degree water.  
  
Libby was nearly halfway across, trying to step on rocks below the surface feeling with her bare feet blindly in the dark, to keep as dry as possible. April was running, trying to keep up with her. When she found an empty space where she was, Libby sunk up to her chin in water. Gasping, she pulled herself up and began dog-paddling across the Ford, managing to keep her shoulders up above water. She had taken off her sweatshirt and stuffed it onto her pack hoping it would miraculously come out dry. April had cleverly mended the strap with some strong yarn she had dug out of her bookbag from a crafts assignment.  
  
Now April was the one using the rocks, wading more swiftly than as wise. Aragorn was now coming along behind her, bearing Pippin on his back and holding a pack of blankets above his head. Suddenly, she, too, found a void, and felt the water close I above her head. Spluttering, April forcefully pushed herself up, rapidly wind milling her arms, catching up to Libby's slow, steady strokes. She had soon exhausted the power in her arms and began to sink into the water, now deep enough to flow over the top of both her and Libby's heads.  
  
Panicking, April reached out for Libby, accidentally grasping her friend around the neck and grabbing her directly by the collarbone. Startled, Libby was also submerged, struggling against her friend's grasp. April released her grip, and Libby bobbed back above the calm water, wheezing. When she had caught her breath, she groped for her friend's arm, spotting her hair flowing above the surface. April broke the surface at Libby's adrenaline surge, sputtering and coughing. They resumed their strokes, April clinging to Libby's arm. "Jeez, April, trying to strangle and drown me simultaneously?" the blonde jested. "Or are you trying to get back at me knowing that you wouldn't have gotten into a fight if I hadn't been with you back when I was an oh-so-cool eighth grader?" April mouthed something with a smile that appeared to be "both."  
  
Aragorn felt relieved when Libby and April managed to regain their composure. He had briefly wondered if he would have to chuck the pack and retrieve April and Libby from the Ford lest they be drowned by the water. By the looks of it, both girls appeared to lack aqueous skills. He shook his head, April had shown a lack of shrewdness judging by where he had caught Libby.  
  
When Frodo's three hobbit, three human, and one Elf companion had gathered on the side of his bank, their cold, wet state was immediately cast away into the category of trivial problems as they began speculating about what had become of the Ring-bearer.  
  
"Behold! There's Asfaloth," Glorfindel said, his heart sinking slightly. He couldn't tell if his horse was bearing a rider or not. Was Frodo still sitting on the horse alive, or had he passed away into the world of the wraiths at a spot under a league from refuge and healing? Perhaps the hobbit was too weak to walk Asfaloth back down to the foot of the bank, but was patiently waiting to be rejoined by his companions. It was impossible to see in the dark, difficult even for Glorfindel.  
  
Aragorn set his backpack onto its usual position on his back and began walking up the hill without a word. Unquestioningly, his fellow travelers followed suit. Libby moved at a jog, catching up with the tall Ranger, then slowed to a walk in case they bumped into danger without warning.  
  
Aragorn spotted what looked like a small knoll in the earth, and he felt as if the life had been sucked out of him for a heart stopping second as he gaped at the bump. He knew in his heart that it was not a natural formation, but Frodo's seemingly lifeless form. Libby stood at his side, the color completely drained from the face as she got the gist. Aragorn sank to his knees and bent over the inert hobbit, first placing his hand on Frodo's brow, then moving it above Frodo's blue lips. The hobbit's temple was icy to the touch, far colder than ever before had it been. He was pale as death, and the heir of Isildur couldn't be entirely sure if the breeze against his hand was Frodo's exhalation or a wind. Had the Ring earned the additional title of Frodo's bane? Was the hobbit worse than dead?  
  
Soon, Aragorn became aware of the others standing around him. Glorfindel had bade Libby move aside so he could assess the hobbit's condition. "I think the perian lives yet, but he is barely alive," the Elf- lord said with a grim tone rare among the Firstborn children of Iluvatar. The Elf sank to his knee, and gently ran his hand along Frodo's face ignoring the urge to draw back from the evil blistering from the left shoulder nearby. "Yes, he lives yet, but how long he has I do not know, he will never wake without Lord Elrond's successful intervention. He may end up worse than dead," the golden-haired Elf confirmed dejectedly. "We must carry him." Wordlessly, wearing a heart wrenching expression, Aragorn took the lifeless Halfling up in his arms.  
  
The group of travelers looked like a very grim procession as they silently descended into the valley along the grassy path, moving slowly lest they accidentally overlook any change in Frodo's expressionless, motionless form. Hot tears were running down Sam's cheeks and staining his face, but no audible sobs could be heard. Merry and Pippin were clinging to one another mutely and horrified, and Libby and April moved with their heads hanging, occasionally catching a hand of the other to give an attempted squeeze of comfort. Nobody paid the slightest notice to the extremely uncomfortable cold brought about by walking in the autumn night air after wading through a freezing river. Glorfindel leading and Aragorn in the rear remained impassive on the exterior, biting back howls of despair. With each step of Aragorn's, Frodo's head lolled very slightly. The Ring-bearer seemed out in the dark, perhaps never to return to wakefulness.  
  
"Is he going to die?" Pippin whispered dolefully to his cousin, wishing for something that would ameliorate the situation. The normally happy-go-lucky young hobbit was filled with grief at the prospect of possibly losing one of his best friends to a fate worse than death. He wistfully recollected the good old days when he, Merry, and Frodo had traipsed all about the Shire, drawing the labels of "queer" and "unhobbitlike." What had been especially satisfying was pulling fast ones on other introverted hobbits and causing a ruckus.  
  
Merry cringed at Pippin's question, preferring not to reply. He didn't want to confirm his own worst phobia by answering in the affirmative, yet he didn't want to give Pippin a false illusion. Therefore, the older hobbit kept quiet, failing to reply. Pippin noticed that Merry had blanched slightly upon hearing his query, and regretted asking that morbid question.  
  
April grabbed Libby's arm suddenly, having spotted dark shapes off in the distance. Libby had also seen them, but dismissed them as a trick of the light, not feeling the enveloping dread obliterating almost everything else that the Black Riders bore with them. "Who are they?"  
  
Libby instinctively reached for her right side where she kept her pocketbook whose contents included her glasses, then remembered that it had been stashed into one of the packs being shouldered by Bill. She shrugged her shoulders at April, shaking her head.  
  
"Do not worry, those are my people," Glorfindel said, lowering his saddened face to meet the petite girl's gaze. A small stir of relief awakened in his heart, perhaps they would be able to help the unconscious Halfling even there. His sharp eyes revealed that three Elves, servants of Elrond, were approaching them at a swift pace. One had white-blonde hair, one had gold hair in a shade slightly lighter than Libby's but darker than Glorfindel's, and one had hair so dark it was almost as black as April's locks. "Aragorn, I do believe help has arrived."  
  
Aragorn lifted his gaze from Frodo, who appeared nothing more than a bundle of blankets in his arms, a small glimmer of what could be almost be called joy stirring in his dulled gray eyes that could not be spotted in the dark by any but keen-eyed Glorfindel.  
  
"Greetings, Haradil, Elrhodor, Meriel," Glorfindel said, sounding pleased by their arrival though a note of sadness lingered in his musical voice. The golden-haired Elf-noble indicated the bundle of blankets in Aragorn's arms that contained the comatose Frodo. "As you can see, I found them, nigh on two nights ago." Glorfindel hastily introduced the conscious, walking hobbits and the two girls. The Elves raised their eyebrows at the attire of the two teenagers, but put them from their minds for now,. They assumed the two girls were friends, though strangers, or else they wouldn't have been traveling in the same company as the Ring-bearer. Haradil turned out to be the raven-haired Elf, Elrhodor the white-blonde, and Merial the Elf somewhat resembling Glorfindel. The Elves seemed like the hobbits; they all looked similar.  
  
A brief smile appeared on April's mouth before her face reverted to its solemn expression. She'd had trouble telling the four hobbits apart at first. Frodo had been the only obvious one, due to his wound, and that had been after the attack on Weathertop. For the first couple of days she and Libby had been with the company, Frodo was the blue-eyed wounded, tall, wounded one, Pippin had the hazel eyes, Merry had bushy eyebrows and brown eyes, and brown-eyed Sam was the chunkiest of the four flabby hobbits.  
  
"You have not yet mentioned the Ring-bearer Frodo Baggins? Do you bear ill news? Where is he?" Merial queried frantically, a somber light beginning to shine in his dark blue eyes. April had begun to note with awe that the Elves had quite an unexplainable aura about them, a combination of half joy, half deep melancholy. The Elves were fair and merry, yet they seemed to be affected by countless losses. The black-haired teen wondered if old age and immortality in part had spawned that impression.  
  
Glorfindel sighed, "the Ring-bearer lives yet, but he has been wounded." He gave Aragorn a sharp, pointed glance, and the Ranger began rapidly recounting the assail on the camp in the dell.  
  
"Can you do anything for him?" Sam broke in at a pause in Aragorn's recollection. "He's out cold, but I think he is in pain!"  
  
"I fear the best we ourselves to do is bring him to Elrond," Elrhodor replied quietly. "It is he who possesses extraordinary prowess in healing. We have a slight bit of food stored in our packs, but he is certainly unable to eat; it will only help you six."  
  
"I shall carry the Ring-bearer," Haradil, who looked like he might have been the youngest of the Elves, spoke. He definitely looked as if he may have contained some physical strength. "I am a fast sprinter, and all due speed is needed. I would have you do it, dearest Aragorn, but you , too, appear weary. I, unlike you travelers, have had sufficient rest recently, and I am in better shape to carry him." Aragorn wanted to protest, but he did feel tired, embarrassed though he was to admit. He had survived many extraordinary adventures that would finish off a man not of Numenorean descent, but even the strongest of men had the capability of experiencing fatigue. Therefore, the Ranger gently handed Frodo to the Elf, stating his thanks.  
  
"I shall be quite gentle, never fear," Haradil said gently to Sam, who had mumbled something out loud about wondering if Frodo could still feel jolts. The Elf gently patted the chubby hobbit's curls. "Farewell, see you in Rivendell, Glorfindel, Elrhodor, Merial, Dunadan, everyone." At this, the Elf turned, jogging away holding the unaware Ring-bearer. Frodo groaned slightly with one step, causing the Elf to wonder if he might awaken to find himself being carried by an unfamiliar being, but Frodo remained insensible, out in the dark. A few minutes later, as the House of Elrond was beginning to come into the black-haired Elf's range of vision, Frodo began to burble nonsense in his tortured rest. Haradil felt pity for the poor Perian come over him, the fellow was obviously in colossal anguish even as he was unconscious; the Morgul-blade was that terrible, to have the might do that to anybody.  
  
About a mile away, Merial took out the scant provisions the Elves kept in their bags for mere wanderings in the premises of their home, and divided it up for the weary travelers. The two shorter of the three hobbits (Sam and Pippin) and the black-haired looked so fatigued they were on the verge of collapsing where they stood, the blonde and the bushy-eyebrowed hobbit had pained expressions on the face.  
  
"Here, drink this. Two sips each, I think." Elrhodor passed around a flask, and the new arrivals to Rivendell each took two swigs of the draught not unlike the one Glorfindel had, and felt more aware, though still subconsciously aware of their hunger and lethargy. Glorfindel handed out a sandwich half and an apple to each of his companions, selflessly taking none of the food for himself.  
  
Merry threw himself onto the ground to eat his sandwich, and the other two hobbits sat on either side of him. Libby and April sat a ways apart from them, April laying her head in her friend's lap. Munching his sandwich, Merry watched the girls exchange a few words, then Libby slap her sandwich onto her bag, rolling over and pummeling the ground in frustration. Dislodged from her friend's lap, April patted Libby on the back, and put an arm around her shaking shoulders.  
  
After the worn travelers had finished the slight food provided, Merial said, "We ought to continue on to the House of Elrond, there bed and rest will be provided, for Haradil will have alerted Elrond to your arrival." The three Elves and Aragorn helped the hobbits and the girls to their feet, then piled all of the packs upon Asfaloth and bill, hence completely relieving the worn-out walkers of their burdens. Their faces were haggard from utter exhaustion, they were dirty and scruffy-looking for lack of cleaning. The Elves, Men, and Hobbits began making for the house of Elrond, which was getting bigger and bigger in relative proportion to their spot.  
  
Libby and April drew apart from the procession briefly to look into a clear pool they had just spotted and scrutinize their reflections. They were curious about their own appearances, as the hobbits were beginning to look rather grim from the strenuous traveling done for over two weeks, lying on grass, in caves, and in ditches. The appearance-conscious girls were shocked by their appearance. Their faces were drawn and haggard, and faint circles were outlined beneath their eyes. They had expected those if the hobbits were anything to judge by, but Frodo naturally had looked by far the worst. April cringed with pity remembering the pallor alternating between sheet-white and the bluish-green tint in his skin tone, and the almost black circles clearly surrounding his pain-filled eyes.  
  
"Aargh, look at my hair!" April fumed, glaring into the pool as her eyes fell on her long straight black hair. Due to lack of washing it had lost its glossy hue, and her hair was completely limp, lacking its normal. Parts of it seemed to have been clumped together and it was obvious that there were a myriad of knots that would prove hard to loosen.  
  
"Are you kidding? You think yours is bad?" Libby said, disliking her obviously greasy, unwashed hair. Due to the fact that she'd began neglecting care for it, not combing or brushing it, it had reverted to its natural curly texture after the rain, and it was frizzing like there was no tomorrow. Shorter parts that had formerly been her bangs were sticking straight up, curling as it went.  
  
"Haha, your hair really is curly. Guess I am the only straight-haired one of all of us." April chuckled slightly, and Elrhodor came to chide them for wandering off.  
  
Elrond was sitting in his study when there was a knock on his door. He, ironically, was pondering the massing of Sauron's forces and the flight of the Ring-bearer. "Enter," the Elf-lord said neutrally, wondering who was on the other side. He had not expected any of his family or servants to come calling, but he was used to sudden visitors.  
  
The door creaked open, and Haradil came in bearing what seemed to be a bundle of dirty blankets in need of laundering. The Elf shook his jet- black hair over his shoulders, and said, "the Ring-bearer has been found, Master Elrond."  
  
The Elf-lord felt relief wash over him, he had been frantic for what seemed a long period of time. "Indeed? What news?"  
  
"He is inside these blankets, Master Elrond," said Haradil. "He has been pierced by a deadly weapon of the enemy, he's been bearing a terrible wound for two weeks. He is now unresponsive."  
  
Elrond sighed, and bid Haradil carry the unconscious hobbit to the nearest room and lay him down on the bed. He followed his dark-haired servant to the room, and when the other Elf had laid the blankets enclosing Frodo onto the bed, he opened the blankets to reveal the pale, cold, lifeless form of the Ring-bearer. Elrond placed a hand just over his nose and mouth. If it were not for the barely detectable breathing, Elrond would have pronounced that he had died. The Elf-lord noted that his clothes were ragged and torn, and his face and body were mud-streaked. He pulled aside Frodo's travel-battered garments to reveal the cold, white mark that now scarred the Ring-bearer's shoulder, which was otherwise clean He felt an inclination to draw away from the evil radiating the wound, but ignored it, and ran a hand along Frodo's shoulder. There was no sign of a response from the hobbit. "Haradil, please gather the appropriate herbs to bathe his wound, and bid someone to find clothes small enough to fit the Halfling." watching his servant's retreating back, Elrond promised himself that he would use the full extent of his healing powers, if necessary, to heal Frodo Baggins.  
  
While the bearer of the mightiest of the Three rings, Vilya, was bathing Frodo's shoulder with athelas and some lesser herbs, there was a knock on Frodo's room. Elrond had changed the unconscious creature into a finely-woven nightshirt and washed the hobbit, so he at least didn't look so weather-beaten except for his deathly pale face and the circles under his eyes. This time, it was Merial who had entered.  
  
"We have brought the companions of the Ring-bearer, Master Elrond," stated the golden-haired Elf. "They are waiting in the dining area, and they are very weary."  
  
"That can soon be mended, Merial," answered Elrond. "Bring them all to appropriate bedrooms, and then find them clean garments to wear and set up baths for them to make use of when they awaken." the Elf-lord knew the journeyers would desire a lie-in above all else, fresh from an exodus over a fortnight in time span.  
  
The girls, Merry, Pippin, and Sam were delighted to see Merial return, especially when the Elf said he would lead them to bedrooms where they could slumber for as long as they chose. Glorfindel and Elrhodor had gone elsewhere to a place which they did not know. They followed Merial out of the grand dining area down a long hallway filled with large paintings and shiny furniture, some which were adorned with magnificent ornaments of gold and silver. If wide-awake, the lethargic adventurers would have been in awe of their newfound asylum. Merial smiled to himself slightly with content that at least these novices were appeased as each in turn crumpled onto his or her bed, falling asleep almost instantaneously upon their head striking their soft pillow, savoring the softness of the mattress and pillows. Noting that they hadn't even bothered to pull out the blankets to cover themselves, Merial fetched each arrival two thick linen covers, and gently tucked the edges around them. Such was their weariness that they were not even aroused by the gentle touch of the Elf.  
  
Sam felt wholly serene, unperturbed by his troubles. He was walking in a meadow of tall, green grass that was appealing to the olfactory senses. A gentle breeze was playing on his face, soothingly stroking his face. Suddenly, he felt as if someone was softly gripping his shoulder and shaking him. The safe, warm scene faded into blackness, and then his brown eyes opened once more to reveal the stone ceiling with streaks of golden sunlight across it. Sam felt refreshed though slightly sluggish. He groggily pushed himself up onto his elbows and Elrhodor's face. The vents of the past two weeks came flooding into the hobbit's mind, and Sam suddenly felt worried. Elrhodor's face looked tired and sorrow-ridden.  
  
"Elrhodor? How is my master doing? Did Frodo arrive? Is he all right?" His brown eyes gazed imploringly into the Elf's face, and for a fleeting instant he thought that a fresh current of woe had crossed the expression, but he might have imagined it, for a second later, the white- blonde Elf's appearance became neutral once more. However, Sam recognized that Elrhodor's facial expression was belying his emotions, for the Elf's blue eyes were grieved. Sam's stomach jerked around inside his rib cage as a realization of a dour possibility entered his contemplations. His face paled slightly, as he dubiously asked, "Mr. Frodo. He, he /is/ all right, isn't he, Mister Elrhodor?" 


	10. In the House of Elrond

Author's note: Hey, thanks for the reviews, anyone who submitted one! =o) Reviews are good.  
  
April 17th: Did you know a pippin is any of several yellowish apples according to my online dictionary? And peregrination is traveling about, especially on foot. O.O You know you need to get a life when you spend your time looking up names of characters in dictionaries. Now for the notices to reviewers.  
  
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Disclaimer: Do I own anything? Certainly! *hides crossed fingers behind back*  
  
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Sam felt slightly panicky as Elrhodor remained silent, and wondered if anything horrible had happened to he idea master. "He-he didn't-die, did he?" The robust hobbit dreaded to hear the answer, but continued to gaze imploringly at the tall Elf.  
  
"He lives yet," Elrhodor said, surveying the slightly white-faced hobbit. He wondered how much to reveal, and then decided on the whole truth. "How long he has before it is too late, though, I do not know. He is in a very bad way, he has shown no signs of improvement, according to Master Elrond."  
  
Sam's heart sank. He chewed his lip and gazed intently upon the floor, feeling slightly grateful that he had at least been enlightened with the reality. Suddenly, a dim beam of an idea came to his mind. He wanted to stay by Frodo's bedside, for better or for worse. Perhaps Frodo could still hear even in his fading, lifeless state. He needed all the assistance he could attain to survive, if there was any hope. "Do- do you think Elrond might let me stay with Frodo?"  
  
Elrhodor peered down at the steadfast hobbit, impressed by his loyalty to his friend. He wasn't sure it would be kind to subject any of the hobbits to such a sight, but if Sam were stubborn, the Elf-lord would most likely give his assent. "Come with me, and we shall ask." The Elf felt an inward regret for hinting his own concurrence, but the hobbit appeared not to care what his friend look like.  
  
And the sight of Frodo truly was piteous. The hobbit was now clad in elf- fashion pajamas, but besides the almost diaphanously made garments he looked in a very poorly way. He often muttered inarticulate drivel, but besides the nonsense he uttered in his sleep, he just lay there, motionless and clearly dying. His face was tomblike in its grayish-greenish-yellowish pallor, save for the dark smudges clearly outlined beneath his eyes. It was fraught and pinched from the fortnight of pain he had been obligated to tolerate before the poison had spread enough to leave him unable to awake. The queer irony was that naught could be seen of the wound except the cold white cicatrix where the Halfling had been knifed.  
  
The Elf led the small creature into a room filled with pleasant -smelling herbs that lifted Sam's mood slightly. Inside, a tall Elf with an inexplicable essence of wisdom, knowledge, and benevolence stood hovering about them. Elrond had a morose expression on his ageless face as he sorted through the various species of herbs, apparently seeking a specific one. Sam tried to unearth an explanation or even proper wording in his head but found the search pointless. Elrond was highly above Sam and his opinions. This was without a doubt the highly renowned Elrond who was often mentioned when Strider spoke of Rivendell. Elrond was the founder, and reputed as the Highest of Elves.  
  
"Could I possibly see my Master?" Sam abruptly inquired before Elrond had the opportunity to even greet the other Elf and himself. The Elf-lord put down a jar full of a crushed-up red plant and gave Sam a calculating stare, sizing up the hobbit's loyalty and ability to stomach a horrifying sight of his dear friend. He knew, or at least guessed, that the hobbit was a stubborn creature and would likely desire to stay with his friend no matter what. Elrond felt impressed by the fastness of this race both in willpower and loyalty. Frodo had survived thus far with a wound that could finish off a strong warrior-Man within hours, days if he were lucky and had a strong resistance.  
  
"If you wish," Elrond assented, his dark blue eyes still analyzing Frodo's gardener. He felt confident in his judgment, as Elrond was not one who often erred in guessing the motives of others. "You may stay with him as long as you please." Perhaps Sam's presence could actually aid Frodo. Friendship could have amazing faculty. "Talk to him, and tell Frodo he will be okay, he may still be able to hear you. Elrhodor, show Sam to Frodo's room."  
  
Sam scrambled to his feet, mentally preparing himself for what was likely to be a heartbreaking spectacle, and followed the fair-haired Elf down the corridor, briefly eying each statue with awed, though brief, reverence. They came to a door whose frame ended just below the Elf's head, indicating a miniature room within, fit to accommodate a dwarf or hobbit. The Elf lifted the latch and swung the door open with an almost musical creak. Elrhodor ducked slightly to pass under the threshold, with Sam following behind. The hobbit gave a gasp of pity when his eyes fell upon the inert, forlorn outline of his beloved master under the thick layers of blankets. If it weren't for shivers at intervals, Sam might have believed his Master dead. The chunky hobbit rushed to the side of Frodo's bed and took one of the icy hands in his own, almost flinching from the searing chill in the blue-tinged appendages of the martyred hobbit.  
  
Elrhodor left the room briefly without a word to Sam about his errand, but he soon returned with a chair about the size of one that might be used for a kindergartener. Appreciative of being allowed to linger at his master's side, Sam managed to give Elrhodor a weak smile. "Thank you, sir."  
  
"It is no problem. You are very loyal indeed, Master Samwise," Elrhodor said, laying a hand on Sam's shoulder in a gesture of comfort before departing from the room, leaving the steady hobbit to keep vigil by his quickly regressing master's side.  
  
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Meanwhile, Merry and April had risen after a long, satisfying slumber, and were eager for breakfast. They were aware of their unkempt presentation but preferred delaying washing up until after they had satisfied the hunger seeming to gnaw at their backbones.  
  
"Hullo, April!" Merry addressed, coming out of his hobbit-sized room in time to spy the back of a short (for one of the race of Men) girl with long black hair and an outfit of "fake leather", as she called it, retreating down the hallway in search of the dining area. The teenager halted and turned around, rocking her weight from foot to foot as she patiently paused so Merry could catch up to her.  
  
"Hi, Merry," April responded when the hobbit had drawn level to where she stood waiting. She scuffed her muddy sneaker into the stone floor in an idle manner displaying uncertainty concerning what to do upon awakening.  
  
"I must say, we haven't been asleep all that long, yet I feel strangely refreshed," Merry remarked. April nodded her agreement, she felt a comparable feeling to what Merry was describing. Right now, the two main priorities to April were food and cleaning herself. She grabbed a clump of black hair and pulled a wry face at the knotted ends.  
  
"Yeah, only what do we do now. Food, bathe, wait for the others to awake?" April asked bemusedly.  
  
Merry's answer should have been palpable to April, as Merry as a hobbit and she had acquired enough knowledge of them to recognize their fondness for cuisine. While they also preferred cleanliness, food was higher up on their list of priorities. "Why, breakfast of course," responded Merry, who was wondering exactly what sort of foodstuff was served in Rivendell, with a small trace of a smile.  
  
"Now you mention it, I /am/ kinda hungry," April pondered. "Only problem is, do we wait for Pippin and Sam and Libby and Strider to awaken?" As she spoke, she wondered if the one she was currently most concerned about, Frodo, was even alive, let alone aware, at the moment.  
  
"And the solution to what you are wondering, April, is that I shall lead you guys to the dining area and allow the others to rest," a deep tenor responded. The hobbit and the teenager started and spun about; they hadn't noticed Strider's coming up behind them. "Good morning, Merry, April," Aragorn added. His face was wan and careworn; the night had not refreshed him nearly as much.  
  
"How is Frodo doing?" Merry inquired as the two followed Strider, soliciting information about his elder cousin's condition. The Ranger's response was to inhale a deep breath of anxiety, and then somberly reply, "He shows no signs of waking, according to Elrond." He withheld the information that Frodo seemed delirious in his sleep, talking a blue streak, and still seemed to be in pain; he did not want to spoil any new vigor his friends had found in the night. "Sam is staying with Frodo, but it is unadvisable to have a whole crowd in his bedroom at once. And April, Elrond wishes to speak with you and Libby later."  
  
April nodded meekly, unsure of what Elrond could want with her and her best friend. Aragorn pushed open a door, and bid his two companions to follow him in. the two shorter ones drew in a breath of awestruck reverence. This hall was more magnificent than either had ever dined in. Certainly beats the school cafeteria, that's for sure! April thought, wishing that Libby were there so she could voice the remark aloud. Several other folk were scattered about, including several elves and a couple of folk somewhat resembling the dwarves in Snow White. For the second instance in that moment, April regretted not entering her elder friend and rousing her. One time they had watched the children's movie at Libby's house when her mom wasn't home, hunting for the pornography April's cousin Mandi had once mentioned. They had only found one example, but managed to devise several wanton jokes about the son the dwarves sang, how they behaved, and so on. "This movie is X-rated!" April remembered declaring that winter afternoon in Libby's Victorian-style house.  
  
"What is it, April?" Merry asked, his rounded brown eyes suddenly fixated on the Asian-American girl. She had let loose a snort of laughter for no apparent reason.  
  
April blushed, slightly embarrassed about the random laugh she had just loosed. "O, it's nothing, just."  
  
"Yes? Merry inquired, his curiosity unleashed. "Please do enlighten us, April. Or are you merely prone to laughing for no reason?" He was kidding around, trying to concentrate wholly on the present, in this room, by ribbing the youngest of the three of his most newfound friends. He felt somewhat depressed about Frodo's current waning fettle, and wished to digress himself from the situation just for the moment. Joshing the black- haired girl would be an ideal tactic. A brief torrent of sadness flashed through the dark eyes only to be replaced again by the inquisitiveness.  
  
"Oh, nothing, just a private little joke of Libby's and mine," April verbalized with a dismissive wave of the hand.  
  
"What is it?" Aragorn asked, his own curiosity piqued. He desired to know quite a bit more about the two friends, who seemed to jest relentlessly yet gave off an essence of having a tighter bond between them then an onlooker would guess.  
  
"Trust me, you really don't want to know," April answered, flushing slightly, a mischievous grin on her face. "It's just. jargon of ours, oddities about us, we're weird people." Aragorn gave April a sharp glance but asked no more for the moment. The question of trust still existed, and only Elrond's interrogating them would produce the solution, for better or for worse.  
  
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Pippin was the next to find his way to breakfast. He, too, had not yet bathed, choosing to satisfy his need for food instead. Led by Haradil and merely instructed to seek out his friends, he jumped up into the chair besides Merry and piled an enormous amount of food onto his plate. "'Morning," the young hobbit addressed as he began spooning down pancakes after having found a seat next to Merry, across from Aragorn and April.  
  
"Pippin!" April welcomed, startled by the massive proportions he had just helped himself to. "I don't believe this, I found somebody to rival Libby in stomach capacity!"  
  
"How can someone so big eat so little?" the hobbit retorted, noting the (what he considered) scant amount of food on April's plate.  
  
"How can somebody so little eat so much?" April rejoined, the slight upward curvature of her lips betraying the amusement she felt at the differences in opinion concerning nourishment. Pippin's counter was merely to begin shoveling down the scrumptious delicacies served for breakfast. They seemed typical food, but compared to their rations of the past weeks, this was paradise.  
  
"What do you suppose is holding up the Libster?" April mused after several minutes had elapsed, wondering exactly how draining the trip had been on her friend. Merry and Pippin merely looked at April and said naught in answer.  
  
The reason for the silence of the two young hobbits was that Libby had approached them just in time to hear April's voiced query and to place a finger to her lip with a wink. She figured she might as well have a little joke on her friend. Amused, Merry and Pippin put on a meek air of "knowing nothing" and waited to see what would transpire.  
  
April speared a piece of softened bacon with her fork and lifted it to her lips. She pulled off the small piece of meat with her teeth and chewed it thoughtfully, recalling the events of the past couple of weeks and surmising that Libby was still slumbering, overcome with exhaustion. If she remembered accurately, her friend was in the process of recovering from an infection of the throat and chest that had made her absent from school for three days and left her voice croaky and Libby herself weak after strenuous physical exhaustion. It was possible that she could have felt ill herself ands said nothing given the circumstances. Without warning, April felt somebody's grip close on both her shoulders from behind. Caught unawares, April accidentally inhaled the pieces of bacon still in her mouth. Coughing violently to clear the wrong pipe of the food, April turned and glowered at the newcomer, who turned out to have been Libby messing around.  
  
"Sorry, April, you okay?" Libby asked, looking suddenly remorseful. She had not meant to make April accidentally choke on the food in her mouth.  
  
April nodded and patted the vacant seat to her right. Libby took this and gratefully piled a large heap of food on her plate and filling her goblet with what looked like juice. Smiling, April mouthed, "What did I tell you?" at Pippin. He and Libby seemed to be the two bottomless pits of the group of exhausted companions.  
  
"Are you okay?" April muttered to Libby when her blonde friend began munching on her own bacon in a pensive manner. "How are you feeling?"  
  
Libby gave her black-haired sidekick a befuddled expression, wondering exactly what her friend was talking about. It was Frodo who they were all most frightened for, not her. "What are you talking about? I'm tired, of course, but so are you." "But. you were sick not long before we were dumped into this world," April contradicted stubbornly; trying to profess that it was not good for Libby to hide things from her. "I've seen you after track practice.and have you ever considered that maybe you fell in the meet in the first place perhaps because you were too tired to jump any higher?"  
  
Libby felt a tidal wave of annoyance stir within her ever-preset temper. Taking a few whiffs of the fresh air to help in her inward struggle against her ardent constitution, she said, "April, you sound like my mom, and she was driving me insane in what she probably thought was trying to make me better. God, I was wondering if she'd frikkin strap me to the bed because she kept saying I was exerting myself too much! Too many demanding activities such as, oh my God, talking on the phone. I know she wanted me better but I do believe cages do nothing for me." She remembered how she had thrown objects about her room in wildness not unlike that of a cornered beast after her mom had told her to come straight home after school to rest. The fit had caused her to be absent for the third day because it had drained a lot of her energy endeavoring not to go ballistic. "I feel no worse than you, I promise.  
  
"Then why were you in bed so long?"  
  
"Have you forgotten that I sleep late a lot? You may remember that my mom has waken me up to talk to you on the phone." In spite of herself, Libby's anger dissipated, honored by her friend's concern. "I'm okay. Strider, how is Frodo doing? Is there any improvement?"  
  
Aragorn proceeded to divulge pretty much the same news as he had to Merry and April later; that the wounded hobbit had so far shown no sign of being called back to the waking world, that a possibility of his demise was mounting manifestly, that he was rambling incoherently in his coma.  
  
"I am sorry," Libby mumbled so dejectedly that April gave her a small squeeze of succor about the shoulders. She seemed awfully angst-ridden about the wounded hobbit's welfare.  
  
"You've lost weight, I think, unless I just have never noticed that you've had bony shoulders before," April said, sounding startled. She was pointing this out partially to kid around, and moderatelyto detract Libby's attention from her ill ease. She studied her friend intently and noted her protruding collarbone and the juncture where it connected to the breastbone. "You'd better eat, your collarbone is sticking out!"  
  
"It's always been like that." Liberty challenged. "Though, come to that, we most likely all lost weight.. Last I checked, very small meals, no offense Strider, and walking for hours on end makes people thinner. Seriously, though, my collarbone's always done that.. You should have heard Jill in chem once when she noticed that, she was like, cool, I bet you can fit things in that crevasse!"  
  
April smiled, that was the sort of comment likely to issue from their equally eccentric friend Jill Kossin's mouth. Back in middle school, they and other friends of theirs had been so raucous around each other that others had often made remarks about them being weird, odd, crackheads, or insane. "We should try that out sometime."  
  
"Oh, God no, that's probably impossible," Libby said with a laugh, though worry still lingered in her blue-gray eyes. She thought a grape might actually fit, but she felt too uncomfortable in this setting to try, at least with others besides herself and April. Those around her, in their manner of speech and decorum, made her feel as if she and April were rough and somewhat crude. They were already displaced enough by their fondness for perverted wisecracks to one another with jargon neither Strider nor the hobbits knew. She took a couple of differently sized grapes and slipped them into her pocket, planning on trying later with her best friend.  
  
When the meal was ended, Aragorn asked the two girls to come with him to speak with him. The two teenagers exchanged uneasy glances, attempting to theorize the third-degree apt to be in store for them. Aragorn noted their trepidation but opted not to mention it. They would find out soon enough that Elrond was a benevolent figure, assuming that Libby and April themselves were benign souls.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ Author's note: Remember to alert me of any inconsistencies! This is the last of the chapters which had an "original" version. 


	11. Talking

Author's note: Happy end of the month of April. Or beginning of May, depending on whenever the frick I update this story. Or it could be after doomsday (aka the AP European History exam on May 9) as you read this, who knows? Well, if it's before Doomsday, I'm worried out of my wits. If after, I'm relieved that its all over, for better or for worse. (Addition of July 17, 2003: I got a 3! I passed! I PASSED! I didn't waste 50 dollars! Yes, July, talk about way past Doomsday, I actually have my score!) Sorry if I screwed up Elrond's character, I promise I tried.. I usually do my writing at 1AM though, so what can I say? Just to point out one thing you should know.. Libby was a fan of the LotR books and particularly speculated about Weathertop most, hence her and April's being dumped onto Weathertop.  
  
Disclaimer: Aargh, I hate disclaimers! *stabs* Anyhoo, I'm afraid I don't own Lord of the Rings, as I am certainly not the god JRR Tolkien.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~  
  
"Please hurry up, I really need to bring you two to Elrond," Aragorn said impatiently. Libby and April had stopped dead when they saw a looking glass, and were now scrutinizing themselves intently in them. Libby had removed what she called her sweatshirt and tired it around her waist by its arms. She was now raising both arms, and muttering about her collarbone, while April kept poking her stomach for some odd reason.  
  
"It doesn't jiggle as much as it used to. it still jiggles, but not as much." April poked her stomach again, and the flab lingering on it jumped slightly, then became still.  
  
"Duuude- I have like a double collarbone.. Or is that a tendon?" There was another body component that protruded along with her collarbone when she raised her arms. Lowering them, Libby added, "And the bottom of my ribs was definitely not visible before. Nor did I have that line down my stomach. Gawd, if I was about ten or twenty pounds thinner than now I'll actually look like I did in sixth grade!"  
  
April laughed. "I remember you then. you definitely were a scrawny little thing!" Though she would never say so to Libby, the blonde had definitely filled out a lot from fifth and sixth grades. How many pounds did Libby say she had gained since the end of sixth grade? Around forty or forty-five? And sixty or sixty-five from the summer before Libby was in fifth grade? April knew that she shouldn't be thinking that though- her height had stagnated at 5'1", which she had reached in fourth grade, while her weight continued to climb: 90, 100, 110, 120, reaching its peak at 135. Now it seemed to enjoy jumping between 120 and 130, though April believed she had dropped under 120 for the first time since the end of seventh or the beginning of eighth grade.  
  
"I bet I weigh about 140.. Perhaps even less! I wouldn't be surprised if I did walk off twenty-five pounds. Woohoo, this is great!" Libby said enthusiastically. She left the thoughts of When have I ever kept weight off? unsaid.  
  
"Come ON, you two," Aragorn urged, beginning to feel rather annoyed. Worry about Frodo was stretching his nerves to the breaking point, and his temper was beginning to resemble that of Gandalf's on a good day, that of Libby's on an average day. "You two are taking far to long at that mirror.. You can assess changes in your appearances later if they are so important! Elrond told me to fetch you two at least fifteen minutes ago!" Looking abashed, the two teenagers finally complied with the Ranger's impatient command. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Aragorn ushered the blonde and the black-haired girl into the most elaborate room the teenagers had ever encountered in their lives. Libby gasped, this made the mansion she had spent a night in on a field trip in sixth grade in Calmest State Park look positively drab indeed. April, who had spent a night in a five-star hotel with her well-to-do grandmother while visiting her in Florida over spring break in eighth grade, felt the same as her friend. "Damn." the black-haired teen murmured underneath her breath, clearly impressed by the four-poster bed that looked big enough to hold three or four obese people, with luxurious silken hangings and satin sheets. The headboard and footboard both were decorated with elaborate wood- carvings of what appeared to be scenes of a majestic forest. Several swords were displayed on the walls, encrusted with jewels that appeared to be diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. There were a dozen bookcases made of perfectly polished wood, filled to capacity with books of varying ages. There were pictures of the sky, the sea, and woods on the walls, contained within very fine frames. Naturally, no glass protected the forest; as this place seemed relic of ancient times. There were several chairs with a velvety covering over the wooden frame and feather cushions. The room was immaculate.  
  
"Lord Elrond's sleeping quarters," Aragorn said, indicating the room. Wish my room looked like this, April thought, thinking of her room at home, and her bed that was really a mattress, pillow, and sheets- almost like what one would usually give to a houseguest. Her bedroom was the direct opposite of Elrond's room- a literal disaster area. In April's room, magazines, graphic novels, and CDs were strewn all over the place. Her blankets were usually in a heap in the corner, along with clothes that had been worn whenever she was too lazy to put them in her mother's hamper. April's small television sat on a low table, and her stereo was next to the TV. The birdcage containing her two pet birds was kept in the center of the living room. She had not yet met anyone with more of a mess for a bedroom than herself. As Libby had jokingly said when she had first seen April's room, "My mom would kill me if I kept my room like this!"  
  
"Hey, April, this resembles your room a little bit!" Libby joked, giving her friend a poke on the shoulder. April shoved Libby in retort, and both girls laughed. "I mean, the likeness concerning tidiness is breathtaking!"  
  
"Aw, shut up Libs," April said with a mock glower at her friend. Libby raised her left eyebrow and lowered her right. Aragorn shook his head, these two were certainly fond of joking around with each other. Elrond was apt to come soon enough, he knew the elf-lord was off tending Frodo at the moment.  
  
Would that the Ring-bearer would awake! Every effort to call back the hapless creature from the heavy darkness he had descended into proved fruitless, and he was lingering on the brink of the world of shadow. If strayed but another inch, Frodo's soul would be whisked off to Mordor as a wraith and his body would be left with more of a void than he would if he died of natural causes. He showed no signs that he lived yet save for the ceaseless drabble and the weak, fluttering pulse present in his neck and right wrist. The pulse in his left wrist was absent, as Elrond had said gravely, signaling that the wound had deleted all life from Frodo's left arm and side. The treacherous Ring that caused all of this trouble still hung about the Ring-bearer's neck on a chain, glittering sinisterly, yet enticingly, as it had always done. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
About ten minutes later, Elrond entered his bedchamber to find Libby and April still there, seated on chairs while Aragorn stood in the floor space between them. The Elf felt all but used up from the futile ventures to revive the small hobbit, and he fervently hoped that this hobbit would not be one of the rare exceptions of patients that he failed. He was, however, building on a seed of a theory that he had formulated when the moribund Halfling had first been brought in. Frodo Baggins' condition was continuing to deteriorate despite Elrond's best efforts to heal him, and his ragged breathing was beginning to bear a resemblance to a death rattle. He would confide in Aragorn later, but for now he had these two girls to deal with, and questions to answer.  
  
The Elf-lord pulled a chair over to face the girls and sank into it, trying not to allow them to see his exhaustion. Both girls were filthy, having not found the opportunity to bathe, and their skin was streaked with remnants of mud that had not washed away when crossing the Bruinen. The taller one's wavy-to-curly hair was matted and contained so much grime it looked almost brown, severely mismatching her golden eyebrows. The black hair of the other girl was completely devoid of body, and was obviously knotted at the bottom as it rested limply atop the shoulders. Both had the slightly unhealthy look of people who had lost a great deal of body mass in a short space of time, the taller girl's collarbone protruding above the neck of her shirt, indenting into her shoulders in an extremely concave manner. The other was not quite so skeletally thin, but her clothes were hanging extremely loosely about her. To add to their decrepit appearance, Libby was swaying slightly in the chair as if she'd fall asleep on the spot, while April had slumped backwards so much that her bottom was almost at the edge of the seat.  
  
"You are Liberty Artlong, right?" Elrond asked, fixating his gaze upon the taller blonde first. Elrond had decided to question her first, as Aragorn had said she was older and more outspoken than her comrade. Something flickered in the girl's expression when Elrond asked his first out of many questions.  
  
"I would prefer to be called Libby, I have hated my name for about half my lifetime, maybe even longer."  
  
"Do you?" Elrond mused thoughtfully, gazing at the girl, who looked like she was a very young member of the race of Men. It was his custom to call others by their proper names, but Libby had specifically asked him to use a nickname. He would revert to calling her Liberty later, but for now he wanted to make her more relaxed. "Why do you despise your name as you do, Libby?"  
  
Libby's eyebrows flew up slightly; she never knew how to answer that particular question whenever it was asked, which was often. "I dunno. I just- do. I can't remember ever liking my name."  
  
"I see," said Elrond, sounding skeptical. He scrutinized the blonde closely, looking her directly in the face, and decided that she was being honest, and that disliking her given name was just a certainty of her character. Still wishing to be conversational, he then asked, "How old are you, Libby? And you, April?"  
  
"We're both sixteen, although I just turned sixteen a month or two ago and Libby will turn seventeen in about three months. At least, I think she's turning seventeen, I don't think she's seventeen yet because it was May where we live and her birthday's in September- I am highly confused, though." April had decided to add her own input to the conversation, although her voice did sound somewhat incoherent. "I am confused about how we ended up here."  
  
"Where do you two hail from?" Elrond asked, still surveying the girls with his dark blue eyes. April's brown eyes closed and Libby reached over to give her a smack on the shoulder to arouse her, reaching past Aragorn.  
  
"River City," April replied, after groaning slightly and stifling a yawn.  
  
"River City." Elrond's eyebrows furrowed, he had never heard of the place although it did sound a suitable name for a location in Middle- Earth. "Where would River City be located?" Perhaps it was in the far-off East of which he knew little and where customs were rumored to be strange. The garb of these two strange girls sitting before him was definitely unusual.  
  
"Long Island," responded April, only to be asked yet another question concerning the location.  
  
"New York," the blonde, Liberty, replied, with a tone sounding somewhat impertinent as if he should have known. Elrond decided to ignore the slight impudence of the young girl and instead posed another query, about where New York was.  
  
"United States, North America, Earth, the universe." Liberty answered, stringing less and less specific generalizations about the area of which she and April were denizens into her sentence.  
  
"Liberty, I am afraid I am unfamiliar with the place of your inhabitance," Elrond said. Libby realized that she had been somewhat rude to the Elf, and decided this would not be a fitting time to remind him about her opinion of being called Liberty.  
  
"It feels as if we were transported through time and space," April pondered audibly. A pair of blue eyes, gray eyes, and bluish-gray eyes all turned to look at her, and April blushed to the roots of her black hair.  
  
"April!" Libby said something. "Why do I suddenly feel like you've been hiding something from me? I mean the time when we first ran into the group, on Weathertop, you acted almost like you didn't care when Strider jumped out and held his sword practically at our throats!"  
  
Before Libby could add more examples to strange behaviors she had observed in her friend, Elrond interceded with a question about how they'd gotten to Weathertop and what business brought them there in the first place.  
  
"We weren't exactly expecting landing on the top of a hill!" Libby said. "This is gonna sound totally weird, you'll like think we've like gone off the deep end, but a flash of light brought us there! A bunch of colors, then we were there!"  
  
"Please elaborate," said Elrond when Liberty did not get any more specific about the flash of light, and she had not mentioned from where the colors had supposedly transported her. "Where were you before you got to Weathertop if you are speaking the truth?" Their story was observed but Elrond kept endeavoring to maintain eye contact with whoever was speaking at the moment, and neither Liberty nor April were showing any signs of having told a falsehood.  
  
"We were on the train tracks, the bridge crossing over my street. I guess you don't know what trains are, they're like a metal horse powered by steam, I can't really explain them," said April. "Well, we were trying to pull a crystal imbedded in the wood of the tracks out."  
  
"What crystal?" Libby asked, sounding extremely disorientated.  
  
"You still don't remember? Purple crystal, stuck pretty deep in the wood, opaque but slightly see-through." Libby's eyes rounded, and April knew that she had just jogged her friend's memory, as she knew she would if she specifically described it. She was not surprised by Libby's confusion, she had been forewarned of this in her dream.  
  
Libby gave her friend a look, "It was stuck deep, but April here seemed to want it, I guess for one of her hobbies, but it was stuck hard, so we both decided to pull at the same time to get it out. Well, like, we counted to three and pulled, and then suddenly, I don't know if you felt it April, but I felt like my entire body had been hit really hard by something."  
  
"I felt it too," said April. She was going to explain her side and what she knew, but she decided she wanted to let Libby talk, so she could clarify exactly what happened. She wasn't sure this was exactly the proper moment to let Libby in on the secret but intuition told her Elrond was apt to question her about strange behavior patterns of hers Libby had noticed.  
  
"Well, after we felt like the explosive force hit us, I felt myself flying and I saw the colors show up," said Libby. "I think very color in existence showed up swirling around us. and then we suddenly hit the ground, and everything went first dark then completely switched to a hilly landscape. the Weather Hills, did you say they're called?" Aragorn nodded. "So I'm not mistaken. April, does what I have described tally with what you saw?" The black-haired teenager muttered something akin to yes.  
  
Elrond felt that one of these girls, seemingly April, was concealing something. Judging by the fact that Liberty was secreting no air of secrecy, it appeared that whatever was concealed was unbeknownst to even her dearest friend. Liberty was merely describing what she saw, and she did not seem to be hiding anything. Elrond decided to propound another slightly tedious question for Liberty. "How did you two come across Aragorn, Frodo Baggins, and their companions?"  
  
"Um, I guess the best way to explain it is we like accidentally ran into each other, er, I mean came upon each other." Liberty had realized by now that idioms customary to Americans would be likely to confuse the inhabitants of this alternate universe, and was now using more elaborate dialect she knew, though keeping it simple enough for April to understand.  
  
"We heard voices, the both of us," said April. Sticking to a habit she had learned while institutionalized, she made sure that Elrond knew that both Libby and herself had heard these said voices so that she would not be judged to be deluded. "One voice that was deep like adults, others on the higher side, though not quite feminine, you know? I heard something about a Gandalf, whoever that may be, caution, a ring. Then Libby sneezed."  
  
"Hey, my nose itched, okay?" Liberty interrupted defensively. "And of course it had to be my loud sneeze, although Strider and the hobbits are all right, aren't they?"  
  
"Even if Strider did scare the hell out of us," April butted in. "He like slammed us into a rock and then pulled his sword on us though I guess now that it was because he thought we were possibly on the side of, I notice you guys call them the Enemy so I'll just say that. "  
  
"So you were scared? You looked dazed to me, you were acting really weird on the tracks and when Strider scared us, I thought it was the meds," Libby divulged.  
  
April gave a slightly grim smile. "No, not the meds, though they really did screw around with me, didn't they? I am doing okay without them now, thank you, even if I do have a chemical imbalance as they put it with their scientific jargon."  
  
Elrond converted his attention to April now, thinking that perhaps she was finally deciding to disclose what she was concealing. "Can you explain what you mean by meds and a chemical imbalance?"  
  
April cringed, not too pleased to have to reveal her past few months to Elrond and Aragorn. Wouldn't they choose not to trust her once she admitted she had been engulfed in madness and therefore hospitalized in a nuthouse for several weeks? She had gotten lucky with Libby, Libby did not treat her much differently, but surely these two would lock her up or something, consider her to be dangerous?  
  
Noting her friend's discomfort, Libby jumped to her feet, no longer looking lackluster, and squeezed into April's chair, draping a consoling arm about her shoulders, considerably bonier than they'd been back in River City. Heartened by her friend's empathy, April took a shuddering breath and told the whole story of how she had been a cutter, how she'd tried to kill herself, how she had experienced hallucination, how she had finally ended up in a mental hospital, in a straitjacket at her worst moment, how the medicine to straighten out the so-called chemical imbalance made her violently ill and at times gave her quite the temper. The whole time, she was gripping Libby's wrist to reassure herself. All over an Ouija board, all because skeptics had written her off as crazy. But what would Elrond and Strider think? She feared being condemned to a life of confinement once more- a situation which would drive her to being suicidal just as it had back in the institution she had been in November and December last year- they had refused to put anything remotely sharp in her small room. The outward scars were not something April was overly proud of, and those who cut as a part of a group trend sickened her.  
  
"Look at me," said Elrond sounding grave. Very reluctantly, she raised her dark eyes to meet Elrond's, and Libby felt the grip on her wrist tighten. Elrond unblinkingly held April's gaze for a long moment, as if trying to use them as windows to see what she was like inside. She seemed honest, just heavily downtrodden, and he suspected that Liberty might have somehow kept her from taking her own life, and that the fair-haired girl seemed to be some sort of binding holding April from harming herself.  
  
"Elrond, do you have any clue what I felt and saw?" Libby asked. She had hitherto given the transition to this place no thought, but now she was beginning to wonder what it had been.  
  
"I cannot think what the explosive force you felt was, it could have been numerous things," the Elf-lord replied. "The colors was probably shock caused by what you felt, I surmise."  
  
April suddenly muttered something unintelligible under her breath that Liberty caught, her ear being barely four inches from her friend's head. "What was that April?" She strongly suspected that her dark-haired friend knew something and had possibly said what.  
  
"Elrond, I think it was a train," April said. "I don't think you would know what I'm talking about, but Libby would."  
  
"I fear I do not know what this train you speak of, the only kind I know of is that trailing from the garments of a woman who is being joined in matrimony," Elrond said. Liberty's reaction was very curious at the expression that had suddenly come over Liberty's face; her mouth fell open as if in surprise and her eyes widened. She seemed to muttering something soundlessly.  
  
"But how.- But that means- How? That's impossible, April. we get hungry and thirsty and tired, how can it be? We are capable of feeling pain, I think you're probably even more sore than I from the walking, you haven't been in track!" she spluttered when she was capable of working her vocal cords work. "April, can you please explain what you are talking about? What the hell is going on?" the blonde squeezed out of her friend's grip and stood up abruptly to face her. "Tell me!"  
  
"Libby, sit down and let April answer you," Aragorn said, gently but imperiously. When she complied, Aragorn said, "April, go ahead and explain, no matter how absurd your tale is, we have to know everything important about you, and then you two can rejoin Merry and Pippin."  
  
"Where is Sam?" asked April, suddenly realized she had not seen much of the sturdy hobbit that seemed the most worried about Frodo out of the three.  
  
"At Frodo's bedside. His loyalty to Frodo impresses me, I have hardly ever seen such a friendship," Elrond said. "Now, April, if you will cease changing the subject, please clarify what happened and what you have hidden even from your friend."  
  
April cringed; Libby would definitely feel let down when Elrond put it that way. When she glanced over at her friend's face, however, Libby's expression was incomprehensible, it seemed even she couldn't figure out how she felt. She was probably stunned from hearing that it had been a train that she had felt hit her, sad that she would not be able to see any of her other close friends back in River City again, angry that April had not warned her, though the anger would be nothing compared to how she would feel when April confessed that she had known before that fateful May day yet had not told her the crucial information.  
  
Now she thought of it, it had been a mistake not to tell Libby, seeing as how she was slightly at odds with some of her other friends and could have made amends. Plus, April now realized that Libby would have wanted to somehow let her other friends know somehow that they had made her life good or that they had always been her first priority. Libby could have started slacking on schoolwork as it no longer mattered; she would never have gotten to college. She could have cut classes if she desired for final fun times, crept out of school for lunch, worked all the harder in track so she could have clinched a placing spot in counties, whatever. Instead, April had chosen to keep it to herself instead telling Libby about the dream and everything. The two reasons she had not told Libby were that she did not want to upset her best friend, and that she feared Libby's doubt.  
  
"I should've told you," April admitted, looking down at her lap."  
  
"That's right, you should have," said Libby; why had April suddenly started concealing important things from her? It would have been nice to have been forewarned what was going to happen. She admitted to herself she might have thought that April was going deluded again, but nonetheless she should have been warned.  
  
"I'm sorry, Libby. Elrond, do you want to know m dream?" The Elf-lord nodded. "Go ahead April."  
  
April coughed and fidgeted in her chair, as if gathering her courage once more. She licked her lips, which felt dry, then cleared her throat. "Ahem. AHEM." She only began when Libby shot her an impatient scowl. "I don't remember the whole thing down to the nitty-gritty, but it was so vivid that I knew it was literal. Libby here has had rather vivid dreams of hers come partially true in some form, but she did not have specifics in hers such as dates and other events of the day. Libby, were you writing notes all period that last day of math?"  
  
Libby rolled her eyes. "I always write my version of notes all period! I'm not convinced."  
  
"Tia was absent that day, I think.. I saw things for both me and you, I don't remember everything, but what I saw for myself happened. My DVD player refusing to play "Prince of Egypt", getting a detailed e-mail from some prick about his dick, being praised for progress in math by my tutor. But you.. Did you talk to a girl named Liz online?"  
  
"I think I groaned about Tia being absent, I'm not sure. and it's kind of obvious to tell Liz's name because of her screen name! I'm still not convinced."  
  
"Liberty, my heart is telling me that April is being truthful," Aragorn said. "Please just let her talk and contain your wrath for now. " Libby scowled and shot April another glare, then started taking deep breaths as April started talking again. Inhale. exhale."  
  
April was starting to feel distraught; Libby was clearly furious! And that was before she realized just how forewarned April had been. Se tried to call back other memories, and then began talking very rapidly. "You didn't want to talk to some other guy online because you think he is a freak, right? This guy has liked you and a lot of your other friends, and he actually dated one, which the rest of you didn't like."  
  
Libby opened her mouth, then shut it again. She tried to remember ever having mentioned this to April, but could not think of a single occasion. "How did you know- I definitely never told you about that!"  
  
"Now do you believe me?" April implored quietly so that only the fair- haired girl could hear. Libby didn't trouble to reply to that and when she did speak hr voice was shaking. "So, about the fact that we're apparently dead which I STILL don't get, we sure don't seem like spirits or ghosts or anything, tell us about that. Hmm, I sure as hell feel like I'm alive!"  
  
"You are alive, I'm alive, we're both alive and dead, I know that sounds."  
  
"CRAZY, MAYBE?" Libby's temper was starting to flare again. This was the first time she had ever been truly angry with April. It took every ounce of strength to prevent herself from saying something cruel. Using crazy as a description of how April sounded was in bad taste as it was. "How the hell can someone be both alive and dead! I've heard of the undead, but alive and dead at once? Impossible!"  
  
"What I mean is we're alive here, dead in River City. I bet we're in the papers and stuff."  
  
"I'm honored," Libby spat sarcastically. "I'd rather be in News Review for something good like placing in counties, but no no NO, I either show in an article on something bad or about something I don't care about all that much like a tree-planting or winning some dumb academic award. Not to mention what my mom must be feeling. whoopdidoo, though, two and three- quarters of a year longer living than what could have been, so much borrowed time, wow, Why didn't the damn van go over the cliff, what's the difference between dying at thirteen or sixteen?"  
  
"Wouldn't the others have also died? And that would have been a much earlier time when I started getting depressed, the summer before seventh grade rather than after eighth grade was almost over."  
  
"Everything happens for a reason, Liberty," Elrond said, to a haughty eye roll from the teen. The blonde would not be appeased. She knew she was useless here, and what reason was there for the camp incident anyway? Why didn't the van get hit by a truck like her classmate's car had been , why wasn't there oncoming traffic, why didn't they swerve just a few feet more? And exactly what was the reason for a six-year-old being robbed of his life? And what of Frodo's wound and his deteriorating condition now? He was dying! If everything happened for a reason as Elrond claimed, it sure as hell was not helping those of Frodo's side!  
  
"Really, now? Do enlighten me," Libby hissed venomously.  
  
"I do believe you're the reason April did not take her own life, I can tell she had contemplated suicide at one point." April flushed a dark puce. "You served as a sort of lifeline."  
  
"Ha, she was more of one for me," Libby contradicted, remembering when she had been slightly unstable herself, though not to the extent April, or Sheila, had been. Her problem mostly extended to weight issues and bulimia, though she had cut before. She and April had been able to confide in one another about their dark secrets. What happened?  
  
"We kept each other alive," April declared resolutely. "Who was the one person I willingly told that I've cut before, and who did not think any less of me? Who was with me the time of my first fight? Who waited for me after school when I was still a middle-schooler and did not consider herself too good for me because she was a big bad high schooler? Who got in her first fight because she waited for me since I forgot to tell her I had a Library Club meeting? You, Libby!"  
  
Libby was speechless, but she felt as if her anger was dissolving despite herself. She knew she was April's best friend but she did not realize just important she had been. "I feel appreciated hearing that. Can you please tell how you knew we'd be hit by the train and why you set it up so we would be?"  
  
"You misunderstand, I just knew we would both die May 23rd. I just did not know how, or if we would be together or not. I knew that neither one of us could escape. I saw so many possibilities. I saw us being in a fight with a gang and one of them pulling a gun, me being hit by a car, you being suddenly grabbed from behind and your jugular slit by the knife of a psychopath, my house collapsing, a fire in yours, the library blowing up and us being the only casualties because the bomb was concealed right by where we were sitting.I knew we'd die and at least we're together.  
  
"But April.. Why were you so eager for the crystal?" The girls were becoming oblivious to the presence of Elrond and Aragorn, who were listening avidly and dissecting the words of the girls.  
  
"Because I have known of it before. you know how I talked to a witch in that herbal store? How I'm Wiccan?" Libby nodded yes. "She told of a really rare crystal hat could transport someone wherever they wished should they die while holding it. usually the place they think about most. However, they also forget the significance of the place.. You knew about Weathertop, you just forgot, the memory was forced from you."  
  
"So I think about where we are now most? I'm officially confused. I don't even know what the hell this place is! Well, besides that this area is named Rivendell. but I have never heard of Weathertop, or at least I hadn't."  
  
"I wouldn't bet on that," said April. "So, we were hit by the train.. If you ever see us on that day with the crystal and then our bodies or something don't be surprised, I bet at least one of us will have dreams on that or on reactions of others."  
  
"So we are dead.. But why are we alive?"  
  
"Because we're alive here," April answered. "This is basically a second chance at life, only we remember our past lives and we're sixteen instead of babies the age we were in River City. You're going on seventeen and I just turned sixteen. Our birthdays are meaningless here. unless we feel like translating the day or something. I now seem to have been born at the end of July to the beginning of September somewhere, while you your birthday here's in February if I'm guessing correctly. We can die again."  
  
"Aww geez and to think I was hoping I was now immune to death here!" Libby joked. April chuckled at her friend's black humor. Aragorn frowned, that particular statement worried him.  
  
"Would you really desire immortality?" Aragorn asked, eying each of them in time.  
  
"Eh, I don't know." April answered uncertainly at the same time Libby said with disbelief, "And watch everyone I know die while I'm stuck watching? And if I don't also get eternal youth and I'm going deaf and blind and unable to walk in the meantime.. No thanks, I prefer dying before I become totally handicapped." Aragorn felt slightly relieved, the Ring apparently hadn't gripped her in that respect yet. He was surprised how serious the two friends were being, they were sounding much older than their years for once with their words. rather than fooling around. He was so used to the two friends kidding around even in their darkest moments during the flight to the Ford that he had not even thought them capable of being curious. They were almost comic relief.  
  
"Anyway. I saw in the dream the crystal and its location, and decided to use it as a ruse to keep us both on the train tracks.. I knew we'd die instantly when we were it by the train. Do you have any weird bruises? I have one on my right hip, that's what was struck first. I'm guessing that means you'd have a bruise on your left side that you don't know how you got?"  
  
When April asked that, Libby pulled down the collar of her shirt on the left side to reveal an angry-looking bruise on the side of her left shoulder. "So that's where this thing came from. I don't remember being hit painfully enough there to produce this thing! It's fading though."  
  
"So is mine."  
  
"Now, you two, I suggest you take a bath, the other hobbits have already done so," said Aragorn. "I will lead you to your baths, and you can clean yourselves up. Then I suggest having another sleep, you two look like you are still tired enough to drop any moment."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`  
  
After having practically rubbed themselves raw with soap and they were cleaner than they had been in the past fortnight, the teenaged girls returned to their rooms to sleep. Libby had a very strange dream of her own in which she watched two teenaged girls, one blonde and one with shoulder- length black hair seeming intent on something imbedded in the train tracks, oblivious to a train of the LIRR jackknifing directly at them. The train honked its horn, but the two girl still seemed not to heed it. The wheels started screeching as the driver threw the brake an in effort not to strike the teens but to no avail. The driver honked his horn with a long blast and before the two girls could roll off the tracks out of harm's way, the train struck with them with an explosive force. The shorter girl, the one with black hair, was hit first in the right hip, knocking her directly onto the rail on the train driver's left where she flew underneath the wheels of the multi-ton train. The blonde, stuck in the shoulder, was sent flying up about twenty feet in the air, and over the rail of the bridge. She landed in a crumpled, motionless heap on the pavement of the street, and forced a car to have to slam on its brake suddenly. When the train finally screeched to a halt, a wheel was rested right on top of the girl with black hair's midriff, pining her to the track, while the blonde's broken body was in a rapidly increasing puddle of crimson, her hair going from golden-blonde to red.  
  
Passengers were now pouring from the door of the train, stumbling down the slope of the gray rocks which were on the train tracks, looking sickened by the bodies of the two girls who had been stuck. Libby was confused. Who were these girls? Who was the tall, muscular girl with crimped golden hair and fair skin, damp from the rain, and who was the black-haired girl in gothic clothing? They only looked about sixteen and they had died.. Libby distinctly heard sentences such as "no pulse" for the girl with black hair and "she's not going to make it, she has lost way too much blood." for the blonde as they hooked her up to a heart monitor. In minutes, the monitor started whining as the green line went flat.  
  
A skinny girl with curly black hair and glasses came running over followed closely by what looked like her mother. It was a girl who lived around the corner from the railroad trestle. "Oh my God! That's Liberty Artlong.. It can't be! I used to run cross country! And please tell me that's not.. Fuck, it is! It's April Neverton! No! Not Libby and April NO! I can't believe this is happening! Not them, Brieanna already died this year. NO!" When someone who looked like a police officer started questioning her, the girl said, "The Asian-American one lives just down this street. so close to home! And the other one lives around the corner from the aquarium if I remember correctly. Their names are April Neverton and Liberty Artlong."  
  
Libby could not believe her ears. These girls were herself and April! But she was alive! Alive! How come she had just seen herself and her friend died? She woke with a start, covered with sweat. Distressed, she scrambled out of bed and positively ran to April's room. This couldn't be. She ran in to find April's face looking haggard.  
  
"So you saw it too! We're dead! Holy fuck, we're DEAD! It's true then, I can't believe it actually happened.. Me underneath the wheels, and you in that pool of fruit punch." April and Libby had a twisted inside joke where they called blood fruit punch. The two girls threw their arms around each other and hugged for a long moment.  
  
"Just as long as we're together." said Libby. "I just hope Frodo will be all right."  
  
"So do I," said April. "So do I." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Two days later it was October the twenty-fourth. At about ten o'clock, Libby, April, Merry, and Pippin had gathered. Sam suddenly joined them, looking haggard and weary. He had not gotten any sleep the previous night, and barely any the other long nights as Frodo suffered even in his sleep. He looked severely shaken.  
  
"Sam! What is it?" Merry asked, sounding suddenly frightened. "Did Frodo." He knew Gandalf was staying by the bedside of the Ring-bearer, while Elrond had spent almost all his time after the talk with Libby and April tending the wounded hobbit. They were in the area where they usually ate their meals. Pippin stopped in the middle of chewing an apple, his mouth still sunk into it, to listen.  
  
"Not yet. It's just what I had to watch.. Elrond actually cut Frodo's shoulder open and he bled a lot and it was horrible! He actually found a piece of knife in there and said that's why he was so sick! Then he actually had to sew my master's shoulder closed! And it seemed to hurt in his sleep, he was groaning and thrashing slightly!" Merry and Pippin looked horrified, Libby and April sympathetic.  
  
"Yuck.. That's called surgery where we come from. But there's no such things as anesthesia here I'm guessing.. Too early in time. Poor Frodo! Is he going to be all right now?" Libby asked. Listening to the talk of no anesthesia made her think wistfully of Cara Czynski who had had a bad experience with a tooth extraction when her dentist missed a spot with the Novocain. She'd understand how Frodo was likely to feel.  
  
"Elrond says there's a chance he could die from blood loss or infection but if he doesn't, he will be all right," Sam answered. "Frodo's strong though, he should be okay. He's made it this far, hasn't he? And that blasted scrap of metal is out of his shoulder now." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"You're joking, right? I don't find that very funny, Mr. Gandalf!" The wizard had just joined them and asked Sam to come and see if Frodo was ready to come down and join the feast that was in preparation to celebrate his recovery. Merry and Pippin were ecstatic to hear their beloved cousin was on the road to recovery, while Libby and April were glad that, at last, he was taking a turn for the better.  
  
"No, I am not, Samwise Gamgee," said Gandalf. "You will find him looking much healthier than you all probably remember by now."  
  
"I'm sure glad to hear that, Mr. Gandalf!" said Sam, and he almost ran out of the room.  
  
Author's note: So, I've FINALLY finished this chapter! Hey, guess what? Don't expect part 12 very soon, because I am MOVING! This is probably my last night online for a very long time. Goodbye, I will miss you all sorely! 


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